For two decades, there's been evidence that people who suffered childhood trauma — violence, sexual abuse or family dysfunction — are much more likely to have a chronic health problems and engage in risky behavior.
Now, 14 community health centers around the U.S. are acting as laboratories for an experiment to see if screening and then treating people for trauma can improve the results from treatment they get for their diabetes, heart disease, pulmonary disease or other ailments.
While the main goal of that project is to get participants leading healthier, happier and longer lives, there's also a potential positive financial side effect. If the project works — and the lessons learned are expanded on a large scale — it may help create savings of billions of dollars for the health-care system by reducing overall medical spending.
[For more of this story, written by Dan Mangan, go to http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/21...-health-savings.html]
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