Tufts Medical Center’s Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE) National Resource Center published a groundbreaking original study, titled “Prevalence of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) among U.S. adults – Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, four states, 2015-2021.” This becomes the largest study to date on the prevalence of positive childhood experiences among adults across multiple U.S. states. More than 24,000 respondents were surveyed from Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. These four states included seven questions related to PCEs in their annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a state-based program that conducts telephone surveys on health-related behaviors and conditions.
In their review of the data, investigators found critical differences between positive childhood experience scores when accounting for demographic and socioeconomic factors: incidence of positive childhood experiences were lower among lesbian, gay and bisexual adults and higher among respondents with higher income and educational attainment. These findings have given HOPE critical insight into the prevalence of positive childhood experiences and have opened the door to further research.
Research shows that positive childhood experiences drive healthy child development and lessen the lifelong effects of adverse childhood experiences. Positive childhood experiences allow children to form strong relationships and meaningful connections, cultivate positive self-image and self worth, experience a sense of belonging, a sense that they matter and build skills to cope with stress in healthy ways. They help children build resilience and grow into thriving, healthy adults even when there has been childhood trauma.
By better understanding and demonstrating the critical importance of a healthy childhood, we can create better public health policies and practices that increase the occurrence of positive childhood experiences and reduce health inequalities among population minority groups.
HOPE aims to inspire a movement that changes how people and organizations advance health and well-being for children, families and communities. Research shows that positive childhood experiences drive healthy child development and lessen the lifelong effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The HOPE National Resource Center envisions a world that honors and promotes positive experiences as necessary for health and well-being.
The study was published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Mortality Weekly Report on May 2nd, 2024. Authors include HOPE’s leaders, Robert Sege, MD, PhD, who also serves as Director of the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine at Tufts Medical Center and Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, and Dina Burstein, MD, PhD, Project Director of the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine.
Support Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences at Tufts MC
