Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress are public health crises. ACEs are stressful or traumatic events experienced by age eighteen, identified in the landmark Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente (KP) Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, to be strongly associated with increased health and social risks. Early detection and intervention can help prevent or reduce the health risks associated with ACEs.
Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Care (TIRO) is an organizational culture, structure, and treatment framework built on understanding, recognizing, and responding to all kinds of trauma and places focus on protective, resilience-oriented approaches to the entire organization. Adopting TIRO practices can improve patient engagement, treatment adherence, and health outcomes, as well as provider and staff wellness.
FROM TRAUMA TO HEALING: FOR OUR PATIENTS, OUR COMMUNITIES, AND OURSELVES to help address the root causes of our patients’ poor health and provide more engaging care.
Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris, former Surgeon General of California, explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.