Giving Compass' Take:

• Dr. Nadine Burke Harris discusses the importance of understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and how such deeply embedded traumas can impact someone over a lifetime.

• How can this inform education and early childhood initiatives? In what ways can we train professionals and educators to recognize the signs of ACE and address them?

• Learn how we can take a trauma-informed approach to behavioral disorders in special education.

Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

Read the full article about how childhood trauma affects health by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris at TED.