DHCS, OSG Announce Over 500k Children and Adults Screened for ACEs

The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), in partnership with the Office of the California Surgeon General (CA-OSG), announced this week that the state’s ACEs Aware Initiative has screened more than 500,000 children and adults in California for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trained more than 20,500 clinicians in conducting the screenings.

Research from DHCS and OSH indicate that 62 percent of Californians screened have experienced at least one ACE, and emerging data has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to significant increases in ACEs exposure for children and youth. DHCS and OSG note that Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law SB 428, requiring all health insurance plan contracts that provide for pediatric services and preventive care to include coverage for ACEs screenings.

Further, DHCS and OSG announced ACEs Aware will be moving to a new organizational home within the University of California. The newly created UCLA/UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network (UCAAN) will leverage interdisciplinary resources of the two universities to develop, promote, and sustain evidence-based methods to screen patients for ACEs and advance evidence-based treatments for toxic stress.

Additional information from DHCS is available here.