the CDC and Kaiser Permanente
00:14
discovered an exposure
that dramatically increased the risk
00:16
for seven out of 10 of the leading
causes of death in the United States.
00:20
In high doses, it affects
brain development,
00:26
the immune system, hormonal systems,
00:30
and even the way our DNA
is read and transcribed.
00:34
Folks who are exposed in very high doses
00:38
have triple the lifetime risk
of heart disease and lung cancer
00:42
and a 20-year difference
in life expectancy.
00:46
And yet, doctors today are not trained
in routine screening or treatment.
00:51
Now, the exposure I'm talking about is
not a pesticide or a packaging chemical.
00:58
It's childhood trauma.
01:03
Okay. What kind of trauma
am I talking about here?
01:06
I'm not talking about failing a test
or losing a basketball game.
01:09
I am talking about threats
that are so severe or pervasive
01:13
that they literally get under our skin
and change our physiology:
01:18
things like abuse or neglect,
01:23
or growing up with a parent
who struggles with mental illness
01:25
or substance dependence.
01:29
Now, for a long time,
01:31
I viewed these things in the way
I was trained to view them,
01:33
either as a social problem --
refer to social services --
01:36
or as a mental health problem --
refer to mental health services.
01:40
And then something happened
to make me rethink my entire approach.
01:46
When I finished my residency,
01:51
I wanted to go someplace
where I felt really needed,
01:53
someplace where I could make a difference.
01:57
So I came to work for
California Pacific Medical Center,
02:00
one of the best private hospitals
in Northern California,
02:03
and together, we opened a clinic
in Bayview-Hunters Point,
02:07
one of the poorest, most underserved
neighborhoods in San Francisco.
02:12
Now, prior to that point,
02:16
there had been only
one pediatrician in all of Bayview
02:18
to serve more than 10,000 children,
02:20
so we hung a shingle, and we were able
to provide top-quality care
02:24
regardless of ability to pay.
02:29
It was so cool. We targeted
the typical health disparities:
02:31
access to care, immunization rates,
asthma hospitalization rates,
02:35
and we hit all of our numbers.
02:40
We felt very proud of ourselves.
02:42
But then I started noticing
a disturbing trend.
02:45
A lot of kids were being
referred to me for ADHD,
02:48
or Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder,
02:52
but when I actually did
a thorough history and physical,
02:55
what I found was that
for most of my patients,
03:00
I couldn't make a diagnosis of ADHD.
03:03
Most of the kids I was seeing
had experienced such severe trauma
03:07
that it felt like something else
was going on.
03:12
Somehow I was missing something important.
03:16
Now, before I did my residency,
I did a master's degree in public health,
03:21
and one of the things that they teach you
in public health school
03:25
is that if you're a doctor
03:28
and you see 100 kids
that all drink from the same well,
03:30
and 98 of them develop diarrhea,
03:34
you can go ahead
and write that prescription
03:37
for dose after dose
after dose of antibiotics,
03:39
or you can walk over and say,
"What the hell is in this well?"
03:44
So I began reading everything that
I could get my hands on
03:49
about how exposure to adversity
03:53
affects the developing brains
and bodies of children.
03:56
And then one day,
my colleague walked into my office,
03:59
and he said, "Dr. Burke,
have you seen this?"
04:03
In his hand was a copy
of a research study
04:08
called the Adverse Childhood
Experiences Study.
04:12
That day changed my clinical practice
and ultimately my career.
04:16
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
04:24
is something that everybody
needs to know about.
04:26
It was done by Dr. Vince Felitti at Kaiser
and Dr. Bob Anda at the CDC,
04:29
and together, they asked 17,500 adults
about their history of exposure
04:35
to what they called "adverse
childhood experiences," or ACEs.
04:43
Those include physical, emotional,
or sexual abuse;
04:48
physical or emotional neglect;
04:52
parental mental illness,
substance dependence, incarceration;
04:56
parental separation or divorce;
04:59
or domestic violence.
05:02
For every yes, you would get
a point on your ACE score.
05:05
And then what they did
05:09
was they correlated these ACE scores
against health outcomes.
05:11
What they found was striking.
05:16
Number one, ACEs are incredibly common.
05:20
Sixty-seven percent of the population
had at least one ACE,
05:25
and 12.6 percent, one in eight,
had four or more ACEs.
05:32
The second thing that they found
05:38
was that there was
a dose-response relationship
05:40
between ACEs and health outcomes:
05:44
the higher your ACE score,
the worse your health outcomes.
05:49
For a person with an ACE score
of four or more,
05:52
their relative risk of chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease
05:56
was two and a half times that
of someone with an ACE score of zero.
05:59
For hepatitis, it was also
two and a half times.
06:05
For depression, it was
four and a half times.
06:08
For suicidality, it was 12 times.
06:11
A person with an ACE score
of seven or more
06:15
had triple the lifetime risk
of lung cancer
06:18
and three and a half times the risk
of ischemic heart disease,
06:22
the number one killer
in the United States of America.
06:26
Well, of course this makes sense.
06:31
Some people looked at this data
and they said, "Come on.
06:33
You have a rough childhood,
you're more likely to drink and smoke
06:38
and do all these things
that are going to ruin your health.
06:43
This isn't science.
This is just bad behavior."
06:46
It turns out this is exactly
where the science comes in.
06:50
We now understand
better than we ever have before
06:55
how exposure to early adversity
07:00
affects the developing brains
and bodies of children.
07:03
It affects areas like
the nucleus accumbens,
07:06
the pleasure and reward
center of the brain
07:09
that is implicated
in substance dependence.
07:12
It inhibits the prefrontal cortex,
07:14
which is necessary for impulse control
and executive function,
07:17
a critical area for learning.
07:21
we see measurable differences
in the amygdala,
07:25
the brain's fear response center.
07:29
So there are real neurologic reasons
07:32
why folks exposed
to high doses of adversity
07:35
are more likely to engage
in high-risk behavior,
07:39
and that's important to know.
07:42
But it turns out that even if you don't
engage in any high-risk behavior,
07:44
you're still more likely
to develop heart disease or cancer.
07:50
The reason for this has to do with
the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis,
07:56
the brain's and body's
stress response system
08:02
that governs our fight-or-flight response.
08:05
Well, imagine you're walking
in the forest and you see a bear.
08:11
Immediately, your hypothalamus
sends a signal to your pituitary,
08:15
which sends a signal
to your adrenal gland that says,
08:19
"Release stress hormones!
Adrenaline! Cortisol!"
08:21
And so your heart starts to pound,
08:25
Your pupils dilate, your airways open up,
08:28
and you are ready to either
fight that bear or run from the bear.
08:30
And that is wonderful
08:36
if you're in a forest
and there's a bear.
08:38
But the problem is what happens
when the bear comes home every night,
08:44
and this system is activated
over and over and over again,
08:50
and it goes from being
adaptive, or life-saving,
08:55
to maladaptive, or health-damaging.
09:00
Children are especially sensitive
to this repeated stress activation,
09:04
because their brains and bodies
are just developing.
09:10
High doses of adversity not only affect
brain structure and function,
09:14
they affect the developing immune system,
09:20
developing hormonal systems,
09:23
and even the way our DNA
is read and transcribed.
09:26
So for me, this information
threw my old training out the window,
09:32
because when we understand
the mechanism of a disease,
09:36
when we know not only
which pathways are disrupted, but how,
09:40
then as doctors, it is our job
to use this science
09:45
for prevention and treatment.
09:50
So in San Francisco, we created
the Center for Youth Wellness
09:54
to prevent, screen and heal the impacts
of ACEs and toxic stress.
09:58
We started simply with routine screening
of every one of our kids
10:04
at their regular physical,
10:08
because I know that if my patient
has an ACE score of 4,
10:10
she's two and a half times as likely
to develop hepatitis or COPD,
10:15
she's four and half times as likely
to become depressed,
10:19
and she's 12 times as likely
to attempt to take her own life
10:22
as my patient with zero ACEs.
10:26
I know that when she's in my exam room.
10:28
For our patients who do screen positive,
10:32
we have a multidisciplinary treatment team
that works to reduce the dose of adversity
10:35
and treat symptoms using best practices,
including home visits, care coordination,
10:40
mental health care, nutrition,
10:46
holistic interventions, and yes,
medication when necessary.
10:50
But we also educate parents
about the impacts of ACEs and toxic stress
10:54
the same way you would for covering
electrical outlets, or lead poisoning,
10:59
and we tailor the care
of our asthmatics and our diabetics
11:04
in a way that recognizes that they may
need more aggressive treatment,
11:08
given the changes to their hormonal
and immune systems.
11:13
So the other thing that happens
when you understand this science
11:17
is that you want to shout it
from the rooftops,
11:21
because this isn't just an issue
for kids in Bayview.
11:24
I figured the minute
that everybody else heard about this,
11:29
it would be routine screening,
multi-disciplinary treatment teams,
11:32
and it would be a race to the most
effective clinical treatment protocols.
11:36
Yeah. That did not happen.
11:41
And that was a huge learning for me.
11:45
What I had thought of as simply
best clinical practice
11:48
I now understand to be a movement.
11:52
In the words of Dr. Robert Block,
11:57
the former President
of the American Academy of Pediatrics,
11:59
"Adverse childhood experiences
12:03
are the single greatest
unaddressed public health threat
12:06
facing our nation today."
12:11
And for a lot of people,
that's a terrifying prospect.
12:13
The scope and scale of the problem
seems so large that it feels overwhelming
12:18
to think about how we might approach it.
12:23
But for me, that's actually
where the hopes lies,
12:26
because when we have the right framework,
12:30
when we recognize this to be
a public health crisis,
12:33
then we can begin to use the right
tool kit to come up with solutions.
12:38
From tobacco to lead poisoning
to HIV/AIDS,
12:43
the United States actually has
quite a strong track record
12:47
with addressing public health problems,
12:52
but replicating those successes
with ACEs and toxic stress
12:55
is going to take determination
and commitment,
13:00
and when I look at what
our nation's response has been so far,
13:05
why haven't we taken this more seriously?
13:11
You know, at first I thought
that we marginalized the issue
13:15
because it doesn't apply to us.
13:18
That's an issue for those kids
in those neighborhoods.
13:20
Which is weird, because the data
doesn't bear that out.
13:24
The original ACEs study
was done in a population
13:28
that was 70 percent Caucasian,
13:32
70 percent college-educated.
13:35
But then, the more I talked to folks,
13:38
I'm beginning to think that maybe
I had it completely backwards.
13:41
If I were to ask
how many people in this room
13:47
grew up with a family member
who suffered from mental illness,
13:53
I bet a few hands would go up.
13:57
And then if I were to ask how many folks
had a parent who maybe drank too much,
14:00
or who really believed that
if you spare the rod, you spoil the child,
14:05
I bet a few more hands would go up.
14:11
Even in this room, this is an issue
that touches many of us,
14:14
and I am beginning to believe
that we marginalize the issue
14:19
because it does apply to us.
14:22
Maybe it's easier to see
in other zip codes
14:25
because we don't want to look at it.
14:28
We'd rather be sick.
14:31
Fortunately, scientific advances
and, frankly, economic realities
14:34
make that option less viable every day.
14:40
The science is clear:
14:45
Early adversity dramatically affects
health across a lifetime.
14:47
Today, we are beginning to understand
how to interrupt the progression
14:53
from early adversity
to disease and early death,
14:58
and 30 years from now,
15:02
the child who has a high ACE score
15:05
and whose behavioral symptoms
go unrecognized,
15:07
whose asthma management
is not connected,
15:11
and who goes on to develop
high blood pressure
15:13
and early heart disease or cancer
15:16
will be just as anomalous
as a six-month mortality from HIV/AIDS.
15:19
People will look at that situation
and say, "What the heck happened there?"
15:24
The single most important thing
that we need today
15:35
is the courage to look
this problem in the face
15:39
and say, this is real
and this is all of us.
15:43
I believe that we are the movement.
15:48