ACE Study

The Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide nearly $2.8 million to seven organizations to support minority and disadvantaged children and youth who have been exposed to childhood trauma.

This column was adapted from oral remarks given by the author, Wendy Smith, an associate dean at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work, during a Congressional roundtable sponsored by the National Foster Youth Institute and the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth in February.

The Children’s Clinic, tucked in a busy office park five miles outside downtown Portland, Ore. and bustling with noisy babies, boisterous kids and energetic pediatricians, seems ordinary enough. But for the last two years, a quiet revolution has been brewing in its exam rooms: When parents bring their four-month-old babies in for well-baby checkups, they talk about their own childhood trauma with their kid’s pediatrician.