Expanding adverse child experiences to inequality and racial discrimination

Abstract

There is a well-established correlation between health and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Arguments have been made to expand ACE scales to include indicators of racism and structural inequalities. In this paper, we use nationally representative data to examine the relationships between latent groups of an expanded adversity scale and a broad range of child health outcomes. Data were obtained from a merger of the 2017 and 2018 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) and analyzed in 2021 (n = 52,129). Adversities were defined as violent victimization, violence exposure, a range of parental problems, racial discrimination, food insecurity, and unkempt housing. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to uncover emergent groups of adversities, and logistic regression was used to assess group relationship to global and diagnosed measures of health. Four groups emerged: high all (3.6%), material and food hardship (11.9%), parental problems (10.3%), and low all (74.2%). Results showed the high all groups at greater odds of almost all outcomes. Compared to low all group, high all had particularly higher odds of any special (OR = 2.29) or complex (OR = 2.53) healthcare need, frequent severe headaches (OR = 2.07), and depression (OR = 3.4) or anxiety (OR = 2.11). Our analysis noted separation of experiences based on additional items related to structural inequalities: food insecurity, poverty, and unkempt housing. However, augmenting existing ACE scales with these indicators may be unnecessary as children most at-risk for poor health were a very small group (1 in 28) that experienced multiple forms of violence and parental problems.

Keywords: Adverse childhood experiences; Inequality; Racial discrimination; Special healthcare needs.