The Origins Of ACES: Vincent Felitti, MD, Presents His Study’s Shocking Findings That Launched The Trauma-Informed Movement
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Dr. Felitti presents Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Relationship to Adult Health and Wellbeing: Turning Gold Into Lead
About the video
Dr. Felitti presents Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Relationship to Adult Health and Wellbeing: Turning Gold Into Lead
Watch Dr. Felitti’s presentation of his original ACE Study, including raw statistics, videos from patients, and his uncensored shock at the study’s findings in this University of Notre Dame symposium organized by Kindred World’s president, Darcia Narvaez, PhD, in 2010. See below for more information on ACES, Dr. Feltti, and the 2010 Notre Dame Symposium. Dr. Narvaez’s research into our Evolved Nest, including her recent study, shows how meeting our early life needs provides a buffer for childhood trauma and ACES. Kindred World, and its many initiatives, including Kindred Media, has focused on creating a wellness-informed society for a quarter century. While the trauma-informed movement currently and finally takes off, Dr. Narvaez’s research shows us how we can create wellness from the beginning, and move toward a wellness-informed society.
Discover more on ACES on Kindred.
Discover ACES resources.
Read more about the Evolved Nest on Kindred and visit the Evolved Nest website here.
Listen to the Evolved Nest podcast discussion with Darcia Narvaez, PhD, about the her new study here.
Watch the Evolved Nest’s short film, Breaking the Cycle, and discover a film guide and resources, here.
About ACES, now called PACES
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and its initiatives, formally named ACES, has evolved to include Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences and is now referred to as PACEs. Kindred uses both terms on this website. You can find amazing resources on the PACEs Connection website, where Kindred contributor, Carey Sipp, is the Southeastern US Regional Coordinator.
Take the ACEs Quiz to find your score here.
Read more stories on ACEs on Kindred.
Read the new study showing the Evolved Nest Buffers the Negative Effects of ACEs.
Discover more ACEs organizations and resources.
About Dr. Felitti
A renowned physician and researcher, Dr. Vincent J. Felitti is one of the world’s foremost experts on childhood trauma. Leading the charge in research into how adverse childhood experiences affect adults, he is co-principal investigator of the internationally recognized Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, a long-term, in-depth, analysis of over 17,000 adults. Defying conventional belief, this study famously revealed a powerful relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our physical and mental health as adults. In fact, the ACE study shows that humans convert childhood traumatic emotional experiences into organic disease later in life. Revolutionary at its inception, Felitti’s groundbreaking research remains extremely relevant to today’s healthcare models.
Founder of the Department of Preventive Medicine for Kaiser Permanente, Felitti served as the chief of preventive medicine for over 25 years. Under Dr. Felitti’s leadership, his department provided comprehensive medical evaluations to 1.1 million individuals, becoming the largest single-site medical evaluation facility in the western world. During this time, Felitti’s revolutionary health risk abatement programs incorporated weight loss, smoking cessation, stress management, and a wide range of cutting-edge efforts to reduce patient risk factors. Dr. Felitti also has served on advisory committees at the Institute of Medicine and the American Psychiatric Association. A noted expert on the genetic disease hemochromatosis, as well as obesity, he educates audiences around the country on these two very common, deadly maladies.
An engaging speaker, Felitti has traveled the world speaking with audiences and various policy leaders about his research. A well versed medical expert, Felitti also uses his knowledge to speak out against domestic violence and other forms of childhood trauma. Drawing on his years of experience, he has become an important voice advocating for the wellbeing of children everywhere. While time may not heal all wounds, Felitti helps show audiences how we can understand these physical and mental traumas, and ultimately, prevent them.
About the Symposium
October 10 to 12, 2010 at McKenna Hall on Notre Dame’s campus. You can watch all of the symposium’s presentations on the Evolved Nest’s YouTube playlist here.
An international collection of renowned scholars from several disciplines presented research on the psychological, anthropological, and biological conditions related to the optimal brain and body system development in human beings.
Experts’ presentations reexamined the influence of early experience on child outcomes, and how human beings’ emotions develop and function. There is growing evidence that particular childrearing practices positively or negatively impact brain development, and evidence that the ways we are rearing our children today are not the ways humans are designed to thrive.
Notre Dame Anthropology Professor Agustin Fuentes; James McKenna, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Anthropology and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Lab; and Notre Dame Psychology Professor Darcia F. Narvaez are among the scholars who spoke at the event.
Narvaez discussed three recent studies she led that show a relationship between child rearing practices common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies (how we humans have spent about 99 percent of our history) and better mental health, greater empathy and conscience development, and higher intelligence in children.