PACEs Policy and Advocacy

Other Policy Resources

• Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)
  • Adverse Childhood Experiences: Primary Prevention (February 25, 2019) highlights examples of primary prevention strategies, including building skills and promoting social norms for positive parenting, strengthening economic supports for families, and providing quality education and enrichment early in life.
  • State Policy Can Reduce Systemic Racism in Public Health (February 24, 2022) covers some of the policy efforts in 2020 and 2021 that states took to address racism and health inequity
     
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  As reported in PACEs Connection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created a page full of information about the ACE Study and strategies to prevent and mitigate the impact of ACEs—it includes videos, infographics, and ideas for health care providers, employers, states and communities, and all individuals.
  • Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Leveraging the Best Available Evidence is a resource to help states and communities leverage the best available evidence to prevent ACEs from happening in the first place as well as lessen harms when ACEs do occur.
  • ACEs Vital Signs report (November 2019) provides the first U.S. estimates of how preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (including child maltreatment) and associated trauma has the potential to reduce chronic diseases, risky health behavior, and socioeconomic challenges. This study examines ACEs in 25 states between 2015-2017.
     
• National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)
  Building Your Advocacy Toolbox: Advocacy vs. Lobbying (July 2016) describes and gives examples of advocacy vs. lobbying.
   
• Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
  The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has developed a webpage (Trauma-Informed Approaches: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice to Build Resilience in Children and Families) that includes links to materials ASPE has developed with James Bell Associates and Education Development Center as part of an effort to advance our understanding of trauma-informed approaches. This project examines trauma-informed efforts across sectors to assess what they look like in community settings, their impacts, and areas where further information is needed.
  • Overview of Research Summary and Select Program Profiles: This document provides an overview of the first two resources developed as part of ASPE’s Trauma-Informed Approaches project: a research summary and profiles of select trauma-informed programs. The overview includes key insights that emerged as part of these projects.
  • Research Summary: Review of Trauma-Informed Initiatives at the Systems Level: This research summary explores trauma-informed initiatives at the systems level and summarizes common program activities, targeted outcomes, and evidence of progress towards those systems-level outcomes.
  • Profiles of Select Trauma-Informed Programs: This resource highlights select trauma-informed programs from diverse sectors, geographic locations, and funding sources to give examples of the wide range of existing trauma-informed initiatives within communities.
  • Using Logic Models Grounded in Theory of Change to Support Trauma-Informed Initiatives: This Special Topics Paper outlines the rationale for using and supporting logic models grounded in theories of change to help build the evidence base for trauma-informed approaches.
  • Advancing Change to Support Trauma-Informed Initiatives and Build Evidence of Impacts: This issue brief summarizes information from a research summary, program scan, and expert convening to offer insights into critical questions for stakeholders.
     
• Prevent Child Abuse America, Social Current, and FrameWorks Institute
  • The Building Better Childhoods Toolkit (2022) is intended to support organizations in their interaction with media, the general public, and other stakeholders when speaking about childhood adversity. It is based on the February 2021 framing brief titled “Reframing Childhood Adversity: Promoting Upstream Approaches” developed by the FrameWorks Institute, in partnership with Prevent Child Abuse America and Social Current (formerly the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities-Council on Accreditation).
     
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
  SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach (2014) responds to and recognizes the impact of trauma on many sectors in behavioral health and beyond. The paper introduces the concept of trauma and offers a framework for how organizations, systems, and service sectors can become trauma-informed. It includes a definition of trauma (the three "E's"), a definition of a trauma-informed approach (the four "R's"), 6 key principles, and 10 implementation domains.