"Elevate Montana" – Summit speaker: Kids’ adverse experiences connected to problems later in life

The summit marks the beginning of a campaign dubbed "Elevate Montana," which seeks to draw attention and resources to improving the wellbeing of children throughout the state.

If we want to tackle health and social problems as diverse as suicide, obesity, job performance and drug abuse, we need to address experiences that occur very early in life, Dr. Robert Anda told those at a state childhood health summit on Thursday.

Anda was a lead investigator of a large-scale study tracking the effects of childhood trauma on health throughout life. Called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the groundbreaking research gathered life history and medical data from more than 17,000 patients in California.

It found surprisingly high connections between childhood abuse and household dysfunction with a host of health and behavioral problems later in life.

Elevate Montana http://www.elevatemontana.org/

By DEREK BROUWER Independent Record

Full Story: http://helenair.com/news/local/education/summit-speaker-kids-adverse-experiences-connected-to-problems-later-in/article_5e4b955c-272b-11e3-9b94-0019bb2963f4.html