Original articleAdverse childhood experiences and the association with ever using alcohol and initiating alcohol use during adolescence
Section snippets
Methods
The ACE Study is an ongoing collaboration between the Kaiser Health Plan’s Health Appraisal Center in San Diego, California, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The overall objective is to assess the impact of numerous interrelated ACEs on a wide variety of health behaviors and outcomes [15]. The ACE Study was approved by the institutional review boards of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group (Kaiser Permanente), Emory University, and the Office of Human
Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences and alcohol use outcomes
The prevalence of each specific adverse childhood experience (ACE) was higher for women than for men, except for physical abuse and physical neglect (Table 1). Sixty-eight percent of respondents reported at least one of the 10 ACEs; 42% reported two or more. The prevalence of initiation of alcohol use in early, mid, and late adolescence in the total population was 7.5%, 26.8%, and 32.8%, respectively. Among ever drinkers (n = 7519), the mean age at initiation (± SD) was 18.7 (± 4.6) years; mean
Discussion
Every category of adverse childhood experience (ACE) increased the likelihood of initiating alcohol use during early adolescence (≤14 years). In particular, for each of the 10 categories of ACEs there was a two- to threefold increased likelihood of initiating alcohol use by age 14. Moreover, we found a strong graded relationship between the ACE score and the likelihood of both ever initiating alcohol use and beginning alcohol use in early or mid adolescence.
The ARF for early initiation of
Acknowledgments
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study was supported under a cooperative agreement #TS-44-10/11 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine (ATPM) and a grant from the Garfield Memorial Fund. Dr. Dong is funded through a Career Development Award via ATPM.
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