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The ACEs Aware Yolo County Trauma Informed Network of Care was formed in 2021 through a collaboration between Resilient Yolo, Yolo County CASA, HUI International, Yolo County Children’s Alliance, First 5 Yolo, UC Davis POD Center, CommuniCare Health Centers and Winters Health Care. Our goals are to 

• increase awareness of trauma-informed care
• increase ACEs screenings
• increase patient and family knowledge of ACEs
• adopt a shared referral platform (Unite Us)
• increase community engagement around trauma informed care 
• reduce provider burnout

The science of PACEs refers to the research about the stunning effects of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) and how they work together to affect our lives, as well as our organizations, systems and communities. It comprises:

1. The CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and subsequent surveys that show that most people in the U.S. have at least one ACE, and that people with four ACEs— including living with an alcoholic parent, racism, bullying, witnessing violence outside the home, physical abuse, and losing a parent to divorce — have a huge risk of adult onset of chronic health problems such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, suicide, and alcoholism.
2. Brain science (neurobiology of toxic stress) — how toxic stress caused by ACEs damages the function and structure of kids’ developing brains.
3. Health consequences — how toxic stress caused by ACEs affects short- and long-term health, and can impact every part of the body, leading to autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis, as well as heart disease, breast cancer, lung cancer, etc.
4. Historical and generational trauma (epigenetic consequences of toxic stress) — how toxic stress caused by ACEs can alter how our DNA functions, and how that can be passed on from generation to generation.
5. Positive Childhood Experiences and resilience research and practice — Building on the knowledge that the brain is plastic and the body wants to heal, this part of PACEs science includes evidence-based practice, as well as practice-based evidence by people, organizations and communities that are integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices. This ranges from looking at how the brain of a teen with a high ACE score can be healed with cognitive behavior therapy, to how schools can integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices that result in an increase in students’ scores, test grades and graduation rates.
   

ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children's developing brains and lead to changing how they respond to stress and damaging their immune systems so profoundly that the effects show up decades later. ACEs cause much of our burden of chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence.

“ACEs” comes from the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a groundbreaking public health study that discovered that childhood trauma leads to the adult onset of chronic diseases, depression and other mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence, as well as financial and social problems. The ACE Study has published about 70 research papers since 1998. Hundreds of additional research papers based on the ACE Study have also been published.

The 10 ACEs the researchers measured:

-- Physical, sexual and verbal abuse.

-- Physical and emotional neglect.

-- A family member who is:

• depressed or diagnosed with other mental illness;
• addicted to alcohol or another substance;
• in prison.

-- Witnessing a mother being abused.

-- Losing a parent to separation, divorce or other reason.

Subsequent to the ACE Study, other ACE surveys have expanded the types of ACEs to include racism, gender discrimination, witnessing a sibling being abused, witnessing violence outside the home, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, being bullied by a peer or adult, involvement with the foster care system, living in a war zone, living in an unsafe neighborhood, losing a family member to deportation, etc.

ACEs fall into three large categories:

• Adverse childhood experiences
• Adverse community experiences
• Adverse climate experiences

CDC ACE Study site

Wikipedia -- Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

The 10 ACE Questions (and 14 resilience survey questions)

The Pair of ACEs: The Soil in Which We're Rooted, the Branches on Which We Grow

Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse - helpingsurvivors.org/domestic-violence-and-sexual-abuse/

Quit Tobacco Use

Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime | TED Talk

Trauma Informed Community Development | Paul Abernathy | TEDxPittsburgh - YouTube