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Reply to "Racism and its impact as an ACE"

Thank you for posting this, Leslie. I have been concerned for years that people in the ACEs movement think that we only need to consider the 10 ACEs from the original ACE Study. Here at ACEs Connection, we always say that there are more ACEs than the original 10. In this country, racism is a very important ACE.

Although the original CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study focused on 10 types of ACEs that were most prevalent in the mostly white, college-educated participants — all of whom were employed and had great health care — the co-founders always recognized that there were other ACEs.

Since the original ACE Study others have included racism in their surveys and analyses. Most prominent is the Philadelphia Urban ACE Study, which is attached here. It added racism, bullying, living in an unsafe neighborhood, witnessing violence outside the home, and involvement with the foster care system. (It's attached here.)

Many pediatricians have followed Dr. Nadine Burke Harris' lead and included additional ACEs, including racism and gender discrimination, in their ACE screenings of children and their parents.

The World Health Organization includes racism, and many social service agencies that are integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs science are including racism.

Many family and child-serving organizations are asking the people they serve what ACEs they have experienced, to make sure they're including those that affect them. For example, Roseland Children's Health Center in Santa Rosa, CA, which serves a mostly immigrant population, has included this question: Have you lost a family member to deportation.

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Last edited by Jane Stevens
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