ACEs Algorithm Quality Improvement Study

Summary

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Description

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are social determinants of health. ACEs include exposure to unhealthy parenting and family dysfunction. It is known that people who are exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at increased risk of over 40 health problems; some of these include heart d...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are social determinants of health. ACEs include exposure to unhealthy parenting and family dysfunction. It is known that people who are exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at increased risk of over 40 health problems; some of these include heart disease, lung disease, obesity, smoking, alcoholism, illicit drug use, depression, suicide, and violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that primary care providers screen for and address ACEs/social determinants of health as part of the routine primary care visit. Efforts are needed to develop and test algorithms that assess for ACEs in pediatric primary care and intervene as indicated. We have tested an ACEs screening instrument with hundreds of parents of 2-10 year old children in the pediatric primary care clinic at Vanderbilt without incident (please see IRB# 161987). The next step is a quality improvement (QI) study that integrates an ACEs screening algorithm into pediatric primary care visit.

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