My CHIP project is Trauma Informed Transformation of a Student Health Center and Universal ACEs screening. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology in USC Student Health. Prior to joining USC in 2018, for 10 years I was Chief physician of an Ob/Gyn department in a Federally Qualified Health Center in South Los Angeles. Our service planning area had some of LA County’s highest rates of STIs, Teen pregnancies, Preterm deliveries, Low birth weight babies, and all cause morbidity and mortality rates. Exposure to toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences are higher in racial/ethnic minorities, women, immigrants, LGBQT+ individuals, people with disabilities, those living in poverty, and other historically marginalized groups, and within these groups there is an increased risk of being adversely affected by trauma; our patients represented many of these groups. We universally screened all OB patients for depression with PHQ9s; although a great screening tool, it wasn’t the optimal screen for our patient population.
Many of my current patients, college students, are experiencing high levels of stress; this coupled with histories of ACEs and toxic stress may negatively affect mental health and academic performance. According to SAMHSA, in community samples more than two thirds of people have experienced a traumatic event by age 16; other studies note more than one third of adults in the general population have experienced at least two ACEs. Newer cohorts report more ACEs than older cohorts indicating the incidence of ACEs may be increasing1. Even students without overt signs of stress may have histories of toxic stress. Toxic stress can have significant impact on academic performance, physical, and mental health outcomes, so universal screening of patients can provide opportunities for early interventions to mitigate toxic stress, prevent academic barriers to success, and increase positive health-related outcomes.
I am the Chair of USC Student Health’s Trauma Informed Steering Committee, Co-Chair for the American College of Ob/Gyn’s District IX DEI Committee, a member of ACOG’s National DEI Delegation, USC Department of Family Medicine’s Anti-Racism Task Force, and USC Student Health’s DEI committee. My professional, clinical, and personal experiences have cultivated a perspective that considers the intersections between toxic stress and the lived experiences of persons from marginalized groups. The Trauma Informed Steering committee identified ACEs as a screening tool that could be used with our patient population to assess for toxic stress. The original ACE Study was conducted in the late 1990’s (by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC) among a clinical population of 17,337 middle-class insured adults, 79.4% were white, had a mean age of 56.1 years, and 43% percent had graduated from college. The study identified a set of 10 categories of common, adverse experiences occurring in the first 18 years of life, and confirmed ACEs are highly prevalent and demonstrate a strong dose response relationship with numerous negative health and social consequences in adulthood2 . With a DEI lens and guided by the SAMHSA principle of gender and cultural awareness, we created a hybrid ACEs questionnaire to reflect the diversity of our population and their experiences. Our modified ACEs is 18 questions and is an amalgamation of the original 10 ACEs with additions from the Expanded Philadelphia ACEs and the ACEs IQ (International) to include other items that focus on community ACEs (discrimination, poverty, community violence, foster care, and neighborhood safety).
