Mitigating ACEs in Pediatric Primary Care

The goal of the project is to affect policy and practice related to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) screening and intervention in pediatric primary care. First, the investigators will develop and test a new ACEs screening tool that is brief, has a pediatric perspective, builds on parents' strengths, and measures parenting-related ACEs that can be treated. The new ACEs screening tool will measure parenting-related ACEs (e.g. corporal punishment, threatening, humiliation) and family stressors (e.g. divorce, incarceration, mental illness). A research assistant will invite approximately 1000 parents to complete the survey in the Vanderbilt Pediatric Primary Care Clinic. Measures will include child behavior problems that the investigators hypothesize will be associated with elevated parenting scores. The second part of the project will be to recruit English and Spanish-speaking parents for a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine if educational interventions can help educate parents about ACEs and decrease parenting-related ACE scores two months post-intervention. In the RCT, the investigators will recruit 300 to 400 parents to participate in the study. Parents in the intervention group will receive 1) a copy of the Play Nicely Healthy Discipline Handbook, 2) information about how to view the Play Nicely multimedia program online and 3) the TN ACEs Handout. Parents in the Control Group will receive routine primary care. Follow up data will be obtained 2 months after enrollment.