Around any table discussing children and family issues in Ottumwa, Pat McReynolds and Cheryll Jones are likely present, leading or participating, and often grounding the conversation in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) research. They have worked to spread knowledge about ACEs and related topics and build champions for change—all without a formal coalition.  Knowledge about ACEs is now being infused in social service agencies, the education system, health care, the community college, and even city government.

 “When we’re at the table, if you don’t know about ACEs, you’re going to learn it,” says Cheryll, a nurse practitioner with the University of Iowa’s Child Health Specialty Clinic.

 “We believe so strongly in knowledge is power,” says Pat, regional director of Mahaska Wapello Early Childhood Iowa. “We have slowly gotten more and more champions on board just saying that this is the missing piece.”

Mayor Tom Lazio, who has had a career in child and family welfare, agrees that he sees knowledge of ACEs being infused in the community. He’s even presented on ACEs to his staff in city government. 

“When you say, ‘ACE Study,’ people know what you’re talking about, and I think they begin to understand,” he says. “It gives us as a community a better way to respond to children and families in need and we are much more sensitive to some behaviors we’ve been judgmental about.”

Here are some of the ways the community is responding to the ACEs research:

• Parent Cafés bring parents together to talk about protective factors and build connections. “They are learning that it is okay to accept help, to even ask for it,” says Jill Lane, a coordinator of the program. “The ACEs research is opening the door to conversations about things that have been kept secret for generations.”
  
  
• The University of Iowa Child Specialty Clinic asks parents about questions related to ACEs in its initial screening and connects parents and children to services. “A child isn’t a child in a vacuum. They are in a family,” says Cheryll. “All health care providers are being encouraged to look more carefully at those social and emotional components of families.”
  
  
• Family support groups have offered community trainings on resilience, implicit bias, and having courageous conversations.
  
  
• A legislative forum educates elected officials on topics related to ACEs each December.

Without ACEs, Pat says, “We wouldn’t be where we are today at all. There might have been pockets of things happening, but the knowledge of the impact of ACEs and the science of prevention is so key and fundamental to changing rural Iowa mindsets and opportunities for growth.”

Read more about their community on the Iowa ACEs Coalition's blog.