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About the Episode

In Episode 2 of (Re)Search for Solutions, we talk about adverse childhood experiences, or “ACEs,” and how they can help us think more broadly about the impacts of gun violence and how to prevent it. We focus on the implications for school safety practices in particular.

Lalitha Vasudevan interviews our usual host, Sonali Rajan, Professor at Teachers College and the Mailman School of Public Health, about her work on how researchers can think of gun violence as an “adverse childhood experience.” Sonali talks with Danielle Kassow from Trauma Free NYC about ACEs and how schools can take a “trauma informed” approach to gun violence prevention. And Sonali sits down with Laurie, the director of her son’s pre-school, to talk about how they approach school safety while being mindful of the needs of their students.

Special thanks to Kyle Oliver for help with mastering this episode.

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Episode Transcription

Sonali: [narrating] Hi listeners. This is Sonali Rajan, your Research for Solutions host. On behalf of the entire Research for Solutions team, we wanted to take a moment to share some personal thoughts before this next episode begins. First, we know this is an extraordinarily difficult time for so many and we hope you all are staying well and safe during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Our hearts and thoughts are with those of you who may be sick or have loved ones who are. And our deepest and most heartfelt thanks go out to all of the frontline workers: physicians, nurses, social workers, public health professionals, grocery store clerks, maintenance crews, laboratory techs, and so many others who are doing so much to keep our communities safe. The episode that you are about to listen to was recorded earlier this year, in January and February, and before the COVID-19 crisis reached its current scale in the United States and, in particular, here in New York City where we are based. While we know that the topics we are about to address may not feel as urgent as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we also know that gun violence, adverse childhood experiences, and the other issues we contend with in this episode nonetheless continue to persist. With that in mind, we hope you find continuing to engage with these topics alongside us as generative as we have, and we hope to continue to be in touch and keep moving forward along with all of you.

Sonali: So ready, let's show them how the doorbell works.

[sounds of children echoing in the background]

Sonali: [to Nikhil] So we're walking, and we walk down the stairs. And we're at the entrance of my little one's preschool. And, Niki go 'head we're gonna press the doorbell.

[quiet sound of a button clicking]

Sonali: And then once it clicks

[Clicking sound. Echoing children's voices fade quickly to a quieter space, just one child's voice in the background]

Sonali: The door unlocks, and this is their new system.

Lalitha Vasudevan [narrator]: Even with something as simple as how students enter the building, schools face choices that balance safety measures with the learning environments they seek to create. In this episode, we broaden our thinking about the impacts of gun violence by looking into "ACEs," or adverse childhood experiences, and how they relate to the threat of school gun violence in particular. I’m Lalitha Vasudevan, Professor of Technology and Education at Teachers College Columbia University, director of the Media and Social Change Lab, and co-producer of this podcast. For this episode, I’ll be our narrator, and we turn the microphone on our usual host, Sonali Rajan. I interview her about her research on responses to the threat of gun violence in schools and how that relates to Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. Then, Sonali talks with Danielle Kassow from Trauma-Free NYC about how work on ACEs can inform service providers and policymakers in New York City, and she takes things close to home by talking with Laurie, the director at her son’s pre-school about how the school addresses safety concerns with young children.

[music fades up, then fades below intro]

Sonali: (Re)Search for Solutions is a series where we cover research related to pressing issues in our world today. During this season, we're focusing on unexpected and creative ways that researchers are looking at solutions to the persistence of gun violence. I'm Sonali Rajan, a professor in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, working with the Media and Social Change lab.

[music fades out under narration]

Lalitha: Schools around the country have to balance programs and the pressures they face to ensure school safety with other effects these efforts might have on children. Sonali talks with Laurie, the director of her son’s pre-school, about these challenges. To protect the privacy of participants we won’t be using Laurie’s full name or the name of the school.

Sonali: When the conversation shifts to, towards intentional violence or the possibility thereof, what do, how do you grapple with that just more generally speaking. Does that, is that something you think about in your work?

Laurie: So, it's a discussion that we have amongst ourselves, the staff. Not necessarily something we would have with the children, who are so young. However, as a staff, we need to be aware of where in the classrooms we would bring the children, what part is not visible from the door, and we also have like special doorstops that we would use on the inside to secure the room a little more. But, you know you're, you're somewhat helpless. You're trying to protect a large group of children who are not your own, and that is a huge responsibility, and, without causing that sense of panic for these young children. And putting all that together, it's tricky. So, we try not to belabor the topic, we try to create a, a community where people are aware of each other. That you know that what you can protect, we are protecting. That awareness of being a community is so important. Looking out for each other, you know, making sure that the children are comfortable with all of the adults here, so that doesn't set them off a sense of panic.

Lalitha: I talked with Sonali about how she draws on fields of health and well-being in her research, to try to broaden our understanding of what it means to be impacted by gun violence.

Sonali: In most research on gun violence we tend to quantify exposure to gun violence as whether or not someone was injured or killed. And, with a gun. And, from a disease prevention perspective, an injury prevention perspective, an epidemiology perspective, that is a reasonable way in which to say this is how we can document this epidemic. But, that misses the ways in which in people are exposed, and children in particular are exposed to gun violence that might very well be deeply traumatic. So for example, children who have witnessed gunfire, who hear gun shots as they walk to and from school for example.

Lalitha: As a behavioral scientist, Sonali often encounters the concept of ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences. Since a landmark study in the 1990s by Kaiser Permanente, researchers have tied ACEs, what could be described as traumatic experiences that people suffer as children, to all kinds of different health outcomes later in their lives. These can include substance abuse, cancer, and even oral hygiene, to name just a few. The good news is that we have also developed tools that screen people for ACEs. Once ACEs are identified, people can be connected to services and programs for treatment and prevention. In 2019, Sonali co-authored a paper in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine with three of her colleagues, Charlie Branas, Dawn Myers, and Nina Agrawal, that reviewed current research on ACEs – again that stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences -- to see whether researchers had considered gun violence in the context of this ongoing work.

Sonali: What i found fascinating, and this is, this, these are conversations I've had now with a number of my colleagues is that, youth exposure to gun violence was never explicitly included in any of these screening measures or even in any of the literature around Adverse Childhood Experiences. And I cannot think of anything, I'm not sure how that isn't being included in the conversation. And, so, the paper that I co-authored, we ended up looking at 81 journal articles and essentially said, well, here's what we know about Adverse Childhood Experiences, and then here's what we know about gun violence, and exposure to gun violence. And let's, can we make a reasonable case that Adverse Childhood Experiences ought to include youth exposure to gun violence. And then, the last piece we do highlight in the paper, and, and this felt important to state was that, right now Adverse Childhood Experiences are a funding priority area for federal agencies in terms of where they're directing resources for scientific study. But gun violence as many of us know, is not a federal, is not a, a priority area for a lot of politicized reasons. So, in our paper we also argue that if we framed gun violence as an ACE, then maybe that removes the politicized nature of it as an issue, and we can instead think of it as an Adverse Childhood Experience, which it is, and re-direct some funding sources to the study of this.

Lalitha: Sonali sat down with Danielle Kassow, the Senior Program officer from Trauma Free NYC to talk more about ACEs, why they matter, and how ideas about ACEs are starting to change. Trauma-Free NYC is an initiative here at Columbia University that promotes quote “trauma informed practices and policies.” One way they do this is by providing education centering on ACEs. In her role, Danielle draws on years of experience in education in the classroom, policy spaces, and as a research scientist in early childhood education.

Danielle: I think that most developmental scientists would say there's no greater critical point in life than the early childhood years. And that begins perinatal, and depending on who you talk to, can go up to age eight or ten. Particularly perinatal through age five to say, seven, is a, it's a critical point for development of all the foundational things for a person's life. So, the brain development is exploding in early childhood literally [laughing]. Which, you know the example I like to give people is when you think about two-year-olds, and they're happy one minute and ten seconds later they're on the floor melting, having a fit, and then ten seconds later they're fine again, and it's because there's so much brain development happening at the time, point in time. And it's not organized yet and the brain is trying to figure out how to organize it, and the body is also trying to keep up with it. Everything that happens in the early years, sets the foundation for a child's life, and things that happen to children actually impacts the architecture of their brain, and then how their body develops, and how their emotions develop, how their language develops.

Sonali: You talked a lot about household dysfunction, about parents having a substance use problem or struggling with poor mental health. Other forms of child maltreatment. You mentioned sexual abuse. What are some experiences that are now considered ACEs that have allowed us to expand our definition of what ACEs are and should be?

Danielle: So, those original ACEs still stand today. Those are still, those ACEs, if a child has any of those ACEs it is going to impact their development. It actually changes the structure of your, of the telemeres which are in your DNA, and then that changes the architecture of the brain and your, your health outcome. So it does, those ACEs will still impact a, a person's health and their, their life trajectory. There are other ACEs that were not included in the original study that scientists are giving credence to now, and studying now. Things such as racism. Gun violence. Police brutality. The criminal justice system, for example. These are modern day things, that, they're bad, and they, they do impact a child's development and they are ACEs.

Lalitha: Research has begun to look into the way experiences with violence and racism overlap. It’s important to note that many people experience multiple ACEs. Sonali helps us think about how work on ACES can connect to gun violence prevention, using a story I shared with her about a student I worked with as an example.

Sonali: I think a lot about one of the young people you worked with who had lost someone in his life to gun violence and then was expected to come to school and perform and engage academically, and, but was obviously deeply traumatized, and, and a school not having the resources to respond or not knowing how do we respond to that. So I think a lot about that experience. I think, even knowing a friend or someone who carries a gun regularly, these are all, these are all exposures to violence in various forms. They may not be as traumatic as getting shot, but they certainly, we can extrapolate existing research on other forms of violence to say, it is very reasonable to conclude that these are adverse childhood experiences in their own right, and that they should be screened for, and if they are then screened for, it means that we are at least aware that they're happening. And it broadens then also the scope and the impact of the gun violence epidemic, so it broadens our understanding of who's really being impacted, but most importantly it means that we can then redirect these kids to those early intervention, those support services I was mentioning that might mitigate the impact of this kind of exposure on these longer term outcomes. So, we're missing, by not capturing this in our existing screening and assessment measures, of ACEs, we're missing opportunities to better support these kids.

Lalitha: At Trauma Free NYC, Danielle and her colleagues teach people across different sectors about ACEs and how they can adopt a trauma-informed approach to work effectively in spaces, such as in social services and education.

Danielle: If you're gonna screen children and families for ACEs you have to have something to offer them, or someplace to send them. So, I think, I think, from my perspective as someone who is, who has a background in early childhood, who was a teacher, perhaps there should be more emphasis on education. And by education I mean, front-line workers. So anybody who's working in a classroom, from birth through college through graduate school, should receive training in ACEs. Because, one of the things that has come out of this work, is instead of saying to somebody, what's wrong with you, one of the things that we, we educate people about is a more compassionate approach. And that compassionate approach is, what happened to you.

Lalitha: We asked how schools can take a trauma-informed approach to dealing with gun violence prevention. One that keeps in mind a broader idea of what it means to be impacted by gun violence.

Danielle: That's a excellent question because we know that active shooter drills can be traumatizing for children. We are starting to see that. I don't know the answer, but I, what I would say is what I would like to see is more balance. So, if there's a way for the school to balance for example, an active shooters drill or preparing children what to do in those, that, those situations, if there's a way to balance that with say meditation in the classrooms, opportunity, social emotional curriculum in the school. So I think probably the best approach would be balance with things that are positive, that are proactive, that give students, teachers, staff, opportunities to engage in their feelings in a way that's positive.

Lalitha: As Danielle mentioned, an example of ways in which schools are currently responding to the anticipation of gun violence is through the implementation of school safety and security strategies such as active shooter drills. These kinds of strategies are something Sonali is studying in her work as another way in which exposure to gun violence (via the anticipation of gun violence) may be impacting the well-being of children. As a parent of a four-year-old, considering a child’s well-being is personal for Sonali. She talked with Laurie, her son’s preschool director, about how they handle concerns about safety at his school. The school recently installed a doorbell. Even measures such as this that seem simple, send a message to children for school leaders to consider.

Sonali: So we're walking through the hallway over to the gym where the kids are playing at the end of the day.

[Sounds of kids shouting gets louder, then fades out]

Laurie: I've been director of schools for about, almost twenty years now.

Sonali: That's amazing. That’s a long time.

Laurie: It's a long time, yeah, [laughs].

[Sound of doorbell]

Sonali: [overlapping] Okay, so. So Laurie, can you tell us a little bit about the sound that we just heard.

Laurie: Absolutely, that is a doorbell connected to a camera system that allows me to see who's at the door. And we have two locations where we can monitor who's at the door and let people in.

Sonali: So, this is new for the school, about, I wanna say a few weeks old.

Laurie: Right after January.

Sonali: Yeah.

Laurie: When we came back.

Sonali: So as the director of a preschool, you have to every day contend with the balance between keeping kids safe, keeping your staff safe, and, doing so in a way that doesn't change the school's climate or scare kids [doorbell in background] particularly since, here you have kids as young as two. So this is like, these are really little ones. So how do you do that?

Laurie: So we really bring it in to the whole sense of community, and how things work here. Exposing the children to it, the doorbell system has been very much a thing of interest to all of the children. You see the parents lifting them up so that they can buzz it, and then so many of them have even discovered the camera in the office. So that's really part of their experience. And, similar to how we practice fire drills. Sometimes you hear people letting off that big alarm, and that alone is frightening to the children. So what we try to do here is really teach them about being safe and practicing that safety, those safety skills, but in a more developmentally appropriate way for children two to five years old.

Sonali: [fades in] Let's see we got puppy. Niki, will you hold puppy for me?

[music begins to fade in]

Sonali: And then, alright we got your hat, your gloves, oh my goodness so much stuff. So much stuff to just w-- go to, go to school each day! Alright kiddo, you ready?

[music fades up and plays, then fades down behind outtro narration]

Lalitha: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Research for Solutions. Tweet us your thoughts about the episode using the hashtag #R4S. We’d love to hear from you. That’s # r, the number 4, S.

To learn more about Sonali’s research on ACEs and the work of Trauma Free NYC, check out researchforsolutions.com for additional resources and links.

This episode was produced by Joe Riina-Ferrie, Azsaneé Truss, Sonali Rajan, and Lalitha Vasudevan.

It was edited by Joe Riina-Ferrie with the help of the Research for Solutions team.

Our music is “Research Area” by Poitr Pacyna and can be found on shockwave-sound.com.

You can find us online at researchforsolutions.com, and you can listen to our next episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Google Play. Please subscribe, rate and review! We’ll be back soon.

[Music fades out]