Carter County Drug Prevention Coalition to host virtual ACEs learning event
Published 5:02 pm Tuesday, August 25, 2020
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BY BRITTNEE NAVE
STAR CORRESPONDENT
The Carter County Drug Prevention Coalition will be providing training for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on Sept. 2.
An adverse childhood experience (ACE) describes a traumatic experience in a person’s life occurring before the age of 18 that could potentially impact the person throughout their life.
The presenter for the event will be Becky Haas, a national presenter on trauma-informed care and the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, as well as a pioneer in successfully developing trauma-informed communities.
According to the event’s page, Haas will share trauma-informed care concepts, strategies and ways to help lessen the effects of childhood adversity.
“We’ve done a lot of work with Becky Haas in the past,” explained Jilian Reece, director of the CCDPC. “We’re blessed to have her locally because she is known worldwide for her work in this field.”
According to Reece, the organization had training recently with coalition partners, and her youth coalition kept asking for more on the ACEs topic, so she decided to hold this event.
Reece said she hopes people get a shift in thought from this event.
“My hope is always shifting that question from ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what happened to you?’ It’s very easy for us to judge someone and not think of what someone has been through in their lives and how that trauma impacts their daily lives,” she explained.
According to Reece, one of the biggest benefits of this event is gaining a level of understanding.
“I think a lot of times we aren’t really able to understand behaviors or physical or mental health concerns of people around us,” she said. “To me, this training does a good job of helping us look at people in a different way, such as seeing why someone is involved in the justice system or maybe why someone is not able to cope at work.”
The event will be held on Eventbrite from 2-5:30 p.m. More information can be found on the event’s page, “Using ACEs Science to Improve Health Outcomes,” on Facebook.
“To me, it just makes for a much better world when people are looking at why people do the things that they do and how we can better love them based on what they’ve been through,” Reece said.
