Poverty, Stress, and Academic Performance: ACE Scores and the WSCC Model in an Urban District

The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Health and Development in Young Children

“…Similar to prior ACE research, this study finds significant predictive power in cumulative ACE count and increased odds for worse overall outcomes with high ACE scores. 1 - 4 This phenomenon of ACE count predicting poor health and developmental outcomes, which is in turn predictive of difficulties later in life, is considered a risk cascade 7 . Conversely, children with no or low ACEs were less likely to experience health and developmental difficulties, and are therefore, likely to continue experiencing success on age salient tasks, this represents a positive developmental trajectory or success cascade.…”

“…Similar to prior ACE research, this study finds significant predictive power in cumulative ACE count and increased odds for worse overall outcomes with high ACE scores. [1][2][3][4] This phenomenon of ACE count predicting poor health In this study individual ACEs were measured for predictive power and it was found that many of the ACEs when measured individually did not have significant predictive power in determining the odds for increase health and developmental difficulties. The 2 ACEs that were statistically significant (financial hardship and living with someone with a mental illness) both had slightly larger confidence intervals indicating that there is variance in outcome for children who have experienced those ACEs.…”

“…These categories are consistent with previous research on ACEs. 2,4,9 There is no missing data for factors considered as special health needs as these questions were asked in the screener administered before the full questionnaire was completed. As seen in Table 4, missing data for the ACE questions are relatively low (less than 5% for all measures).…”

“…Bower and Baldwin 2 studied the prevalence of ACEs among high school aged children in an urban school district. They found that the prevalence and specific type of adversities varied from different socioeconomic groups.…”

“…Recent studies on ACEs have shown an increase in health and disability diagnosis associated with higher ACE scores. 2,3 Due to this field of research, adversity is no longer perceived as solely a social issue, as it effects health and development also. Interventions such as the Center for Youth Wellness, 5 are targeting the medical, social, and psychological effects of adversities through a multidisciplinary approach.…”