Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs are situations in which children experience abuse, neglect and household challenges. The most crucial time for a person’s development is from birth to the late teens. These situations as a child or young adult can have a negative effect on children throughout their life, not just mentally but they can also lead to negative health outcomes as they grow and mature. Some of those outcomes include diabetes, heart conditions and cancer. This ACEs Medical Conference aims to educate pediatricians on the importance of ACEs as well as proper protocol for screening, prevention and follow up. It will also allow every single child someone to confide in and have someone who will help them manage these issues in order to create a dedicated plan of action. This organization’s goal is to make sure no child goes without the necessary screening and follow up to ensure every child has the opportunity to lead a long and healthy life.
Within Florida, there is a definite need of testing, training and evaluation for children with ACEs. My program aims to meet secondary prevention with its medical conference. This is going to be seen within the medical conference when attending pediatricians are given the necessary background knowledge and tools to understand the importance of ACEs, the long-term effects and the appropriate ACEs test to administer. The secondary prevention goals will be met because having providers testing for these ACEs, we hope that this implementation will reduce the incidences of ACEs by managing the patients. This can lead to the proper follow up care given to these individuals and further reduce the consequences of ACEs in the form of long-term negative health outcomes.
Within the five levels of the Social Ecological Model (Family & Youth Services Bureau, 2015), this medical conference will concentrate on three: the individual level, community level and organizational level. Within the individual level, this conference addresses the knowledge of the attendees and allows them to understand what ACEs are, the consequences of ACEs and why they should be informed of this topic. Through the community level, the group of pediatricians who come to this medical conference represent many different private practices, companies and larger organizations. The networking of these individuals can encourage active relationships between these different organizations after the conference. Last, the organization level is affected similarly due to having so many different individuals representing their respective organizations and hospitals.
This medical conference, while focusing on Adverse Childhood Experiences, aims to include as many of the key principles of a trauma informed approach that was outlined by SAMHSA. The principles that this project will promote are trustworthiness and transparency; collaboration and mutuality; and cultural, historical and gender issues. Trustworthiness and transparency will be incorporated because we want every single attending medical professional to build a rapport with their patients when they are asking these ACEs questions. Collaboration and mutuality principles are going to be focused on due to the nature of the conference. There are going to be pediatricians from different areas of Florida, they will all be able to voice their current situations, ideas, concerns and ways to make the current protocols something that they not only can implement but something they feel will actually work within their practice. Finally, cultural, historical & gender issues will be addressed within my conference because presentations will have culturally competent information within them. This is an assured way to make sure all the information presented can truly help every single child. Second, there will be involvement from individuals who have diverse backgrounds. Not just the participants but also the sponsors, lecturers and staff. Gender issues will be a main focus since that is something in which many teens and young adults are struggling with and there will be a significant tie into the first principle of trustworthiness.
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