New CDC Technical Package on Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Division of Violence Prevention released a new technical package for preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Leveraging the Best Available Evidence is available online now from the CDC’s website.

This is the sixth technical package released by the CDC, and it cuts across many forms of violence and draws on research and strategies from other technical packages. ACEs are far too prevalent, but they are preventable, and having new guidance on the best available evidence for prevention helps practitioners ensure their work will be impactful.

PreventConnect has written before about the impacts and social inequities of ACEs, and different resources for preventing ACEs. The new technical package identifies six strategies for preventing ACEs and reducing their lifelong impact on survivors:

1. Strengthen economic supports to families
2. Promote social norms that protect against violence and adversity
3. Ensure a strong start for children
4. Teach skills
5. Connect youth to caring adults and activities
6. Intervene to lessen immediate and long-term harms

Many of these strategies and the approaches overlap with the sexual violence and intimate partner violence prevention technical packages, because sexual violence and intimate partner violence are also adverse childhood experiences. Having a new ACEs-specific technical package will allow sexual and intimate partner violence prevention practitioners to strengthen their connections with ACEs prevention, build partnerships, and have a broad impact across types of violence across the lifespan.

Read Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences: Leveraging the Best Available Evidence here, and access the other CDC DVP technical packages here. View additional trainings and resources on VetoViolence.