Integration of Adverse Childhood Experiences Across Nursing Curriculum

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) devastate the lives of children, families and the community. Nearly 35 million children in the United States (US) have experienced one or more types of childhood trauma and nearly a third of youth between ages 12 and 17 have experienced two or more traumatic events. Adverse childhood experiences place an economic toll in the U.S., costing between $5.8 billion and $12.6 billion annually. Child maltreatment costs $124 billion, conservatively. Health Professionals play a major role to prevent and effectively intervene in ACEs. To this end, building a nursing workforce with necessary ACEs knowledge is critical as nursing graduates can make a sustainable impact as they translate knowledge in practice to improve health and health outcomes for children, families and communities. This paper describes how a College of Nursing initiated a systematic integration of ACEs knowledge across BSN curriculum from designing an ACEs Curriculum Integration Model, engaging and enabling faculty in the integration process and how ACEs concepts and contents were integrated. Suggestions are made for ongoing work and evaluations of the effects of ACEs curriculum integration.