ACE Study Summary by Charles L Whitfield, MD
T
he Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study looked carefully at the relationship between repeated childhood trauma and the leading causes of illness, death, and disability in the United States. It found a significant relationship between having a childhood trauma history and later – commonly decades later – cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, chronic liver disease, depression and other forms of mental illness, obesity, smoking, and alcohol and drug abuse. It was, and still is, a major American epidemiological study providing retrospective (a snapshot from the past) and prospective (a series of several snapshots over time – 14 years here) analysis on over 17,000 middle class people of the effect of childhood trauma during the first 18 years of life on adolescent and adult medical and psychiatric disease, sexual behavior, healthcare costs, and life expectancy. It was carried out in Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The Study’s findings give us remarkable insight into how we become what we are as individuals and as a nation. They are important medically, socially, and economically. Indeed, they have given us reason to reconsider the very structure of medical, public health, and social services practices in America.
