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Investigating the Value of Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in Predicting Poor Health

Fri, April 9, 11:35am to 1:05pm EDT (11:35am to 1:05pm EDT), Virtual

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are well established risk factors for mental and physical health problems in the population. To prevent health problems, screening for ACEs has been proposed to identify at-risk individuals who may benefit from health interventions. ACE screening has already been implemented in pediatric primary care clinics and population-based telephone health surveys in the US, and via healthcare assessments in the UK. However, concerns have been raised that universal ACE screening is premature, due to a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of ACE scores to identify individuals at risk of health problems.

This symposium will bring together new evidence to directly address this question and inform about the value of ACE screening in improving health. First, findings from two population-representative cohorts from the UK and New Zealand (N~3,000) will show that ACE scores obtained both prospectively and retrospectively have poor accuracy in identifying individuals at risk for future health problems. Second, evidence from 8,000 adults from a healthcare organisation in the USA will show that the original ACE questionnaire cannot accurately discriminate between individuals with and without health problems. Third, findings from a study of US youth (N~11,900) will show that a particular set of adversities is more predictive of trauma symptoms than current ACE screening items.

Collectively, these findings suggest that (1) current ACE screening is unlikely to accurately identify individuals at risk of later health problems, and (2) future research is needed to test how ACE screening can be adapted to maximise predictive ability.

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