Original ArticlesRelationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study
Section snippets
Study Setting
The ACE Study is based at Kaiser Permanente’s San Diego Health Appraisal Clinic. More than 45,000 adults undergo standardized examinations there each year, making this clinic one of the nation’s largest free-standing medical evaluation centers. All enrollees in the Kaiser Health Plan in San Diego are advised through sales literature about the services (free for members) at the clinic; after enrollment, members are advised again of its availability through new-member literature. Most members
Adverse Childhood Exposures
The level of positive responses for the 17 questions included in the seven categories of childhood exposure ranged from 3.0% for a respondent’s mother (or stepmother) having been threatened with or hurt by a gun or knife to 23.5% for having lived with a problem drinker or alcoholic (Table 1). The most prevalent of the 7 categories of childhood exposure was substance abuse in the household (25.6%); the least prevalent exposure category was evidence of criminal behavior in the household (3.4%).
Discussion
We found a strong dose response relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults. Disease conditions including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease, as well as poor self-rated health also showed a graded relationship to the breadth of childhood exposures. The findings suggest that the impact of these adverse
Acknowledgements
We thank Naomi Howard for her dedication to the ACE Study. This research is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via cooperative agreement TS-44-10/12 with the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine.
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