Considerable research has been devoted to adverse childhood experiences because of its strong associations to public health issues. Within a public health context, ACEs have been linked to homelessness [12], lifetime alcohol dependence [13], opioid addiction [14], and increased exposure to HIV risk [15, 16]. Though these investigations have been a critical step in the development of health programming to attenuate these outcomes, more recent research regarding ACEs in the context of public health have revealed that while it is generally accepted that ACEs have a cumulative effect, not all populations are equally vulnerable to ACEs [11], and further, certain segments of the population may manifest childhood adversity differently [17] (e.g., one study found that the adverse mental health impact of ACEs on Whites was consistently greater than on Black and Latino individuals), thus suggesting a more complex relationship than traditional linear relationships with ACEs show in the general population. As such, ACEs prevention programming with a public health emphasis has shifted to more tailored-specific programming for specific races/ethnicities and has shown promising results in Black and Hispanic communities [18, 19].
