I first heard about ACEs while listening to a noon hour MPR radio program. Happened to be doing dishes, and the program caught my attention, a welcome diversion.
The speaker was Nadine Burke Harris, and she described her journey that led to becoming ACEs aware. Her talk was passionate and informative. You get the gist of what she said that day by listening to her 20-minute TED Talk: Nadine’s TED Talk. After viewing her talk, I immediately ordered her book: “The Deepest Well”. This book is an easy read, yet profound – I was hooked.
Nadine makes two claims that are impossible to ignore: the prevalence of ACEs implies a public health epidemic and a public schools crisis. Basing her conclusion on information from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente, gives her conclusions credibility. The epidemic is premised on evidence that people with 4 or more ACEs lose 20 years off their life expectancy – this is millions of people. The public schools crisis relates to challenges of poor behavior by many students.
Given that the CDC and Kaiser are two of our most reputable organizations related to healthcare, it is amazing that most people have NOT heard of ACEs. If they have, most actions focus solely within their direct silo, i.e. little to no fertilization of ideas across silos.
Digging deeper into available ACEs information showed that there was a lot of action; however, the over-riding impression was that silos were operating in isolation – all with inadequate resources. Clearly, integration across segments presents opportunities to resource the problem with a scope commensurate to the problem size.
Three ‘maps’ are being created to inform the public about the scope and impact of ACEs:
- Sectors Map – showing the number and variety of societal sectors impacted.
- Financial Impact Map – showing the financial impact ACEs is having on each sector.
- Solutions Map – collecting in one place solutions that exist across sectors.
Current Sectors Map shows 14 sectors heavily impacted by ACEs. Thoughtful people suggest more time spent on this will uncover as many as 200 involved sectors.
After being turned down by the Federal Reserve to do a detailed financial study of the ACEs impact, we are performing our own analysis to create this financial impact map. Early results suggest the annual impact of ACEs on society is $2 Trillion per year.
Early investigation shows that numerous solutions that reduce ACEs impact exist. We are collecting these in one place to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas.
If you are a person experienced with ACEs, please share what you know with this blog. This contributes directly to our goal to be a useful clearing house of ideas and information.
If you are new to ACEs, please share your questions with us. We have a wide network, so can answer most questions.
Use of the Comment section at the end of this Blog will facilitate ongoing conversation.
ACEs often and usually emphasize the abuse and seldom the events prior to the abuse. Are you assuming that poor communication always or sometimes precede the abuse? The abuser is seldom interested in challenging his/her communication skills. The skills often used by the abuser are not words, but a stick or a whip.
Good points Warren. I suspect you are right, that the abuser is seldom worried about communication skills.
Another piece of the picture is that ACEs focuses on abuse of children. A serious obstacle to reducing the impact of ACEs is that in our society, children have very little voice. If they get up the nerve to suggest that something bad is happening to them, they are often ignored, suggesting ‘they do not know what they are talking about;’
So a real challenge is: how do we improve communications within families, friends, and related service groups, so these issues can be identified and ended?