This is a guest opinion by Rush Russell is executive director of Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey and ACEsConnection member. The piece is part of a focus on children during April as Child Abuse Prevention Month.
Have you ever heard of the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) study? It’s a research study led by a California-based health insurance company, Kaiser Permanente, which wanted to know more about the links between obesity and health habits during childhood, to see if they could identify better ways of promoting healthier behavior and eating habits for their insured members.
The study included 17,000 adults. It analyzed events that happened in their childhood and how things turned out as adults — not just their weight, but their mental health, their employment and productivity, and even their success in marriage and relationships. What they found is transforming our health care and social service systems and underscoring the need for stronger and better prevention programs, with the support of both the public and private sectors.
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