Several years ago, pediatricians R.J. Gillespie, MD, MHPE, and Teri Pettersen, MD, piloted the use of a questionnaire about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and resilience at the 4-month well-child visit.
They and six other pediatricians at The Children’s Clinic in Portland, Ore., explained in a cover letter why they were posing the questions of parents, and they ended the survey by asking them about their interest in potential resources.
“We know there’s an intergenerational transmission of ACEs and traumas. If we can identify parents who are most at risk and agree to support them in a nonjudgmental way when they feel most challenged, then we can help create a healthier cycle of parenting,” Dr. Pettersen said in an interview.
The driving science
The term ACEs entered the medical lexicon after 1998, when a landmark study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study showed that traumatic experiences in childhood – abuse, neglect, and other severe dysfunctions in a household – not only are common among American adults but are associated with numerous poor health outcomes.
In the study and subsequent analyses, Dr. Vincent Felitti of Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and Dr. Robert Anda of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed more than 17,000 patients about 10 types of ACEs and their current health status and behaviors. About two-thirds reported having at least one ACE, and one in eight reported four or more (Am J Prev Med. 1998;14[4]:245-58, www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/about.html).
Adults with four or more ACEs were not only significantly more likely to report health risk behaviors (smoking, substance abuse) and poor mental health outcomes (depression, suicide attempt); they were also significantly more likely to have poor physical health outcomes, with 2.2 times the risk of ischemic heart disease, 1.9 times the risk of cancer, and 3.9 times the risk of chronic bronchitis or emphysema, for instance. There was a strong dose-response relationship between ACEs and poor outcomes.
The Felitti study spawned dozens of analyses and additional research – in children as well as adults – on the associations between early-life adversity and the incidence of poor behavioral, mental, and physical outcomes, as well as on potential mechanisms.
Some research suggested a direct link between ACEs and negative outcomes, independent of whether individuals adopt risky behavior. Other studies suggested what experts in child development and mental health have long argued – that the more ACEs a parent has, the more ACEs their child will have.
And a growing body of biomedical literature linked the extreme, frequent, or prolonged activation of the body’s stress response in childhood – what has come to be known as “toxic stress” – with disruptions of the developing nervous, cardiovascular, immune, and metabolic systems.
Ryan Twomey
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
While precise connections and mechanisms need to be clarified, “we now know that the repeated activation of the stress response leads to [negative] changes in the neuroendocrine immune pathways,” said Dr. Burke Harris, who coauthored a recent review of toxic stress in children and adolescents (Adv Pediatr. 2016;63[1]:403-28).
In January 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a policy statement titled “Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science into Lifelong Health,” in which it urged pediatricians to consider actively screening for precipitants of toxic stress that are common in their communities (Pediatrics. 2011 Dec. doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-2662). But it stopped short of recommending particular tools or methods.
Dr. Gillespie and Dr. Pettersen did not want to wait for tools to be validated and approaches to be proven. “We’re building the plane as we fly,” Dr. Pettersen said.