Examining the Evolution, Effectiveness, and Applicability of the Adverse Childhood Experience Study

Understanding and predicting health outcomes of adults by examining adverse childhood experiences (ACE) is one tool available to healthcare professionals. This tool originated from the 1988 ACE study, and because of its findings, it has been widely implemented and utilized. This literature review investigates how practical and applicable those findings are to validate its current widespread practice. It is concluded that the original study is not comprehensive enough to justify its use in a significant way; however, this review discusses how it can be built upon and modernized to capture more demographics, validate its results to apply to more populations, and become a better predictive model.