Franciscan Health Partners With BroadStreet To Launch First National ACEs Data Dashboards

MISHAWAKA, Indiana – Franciscan Health has partnered with BroadStreet to create nationally available dashboards for ACEs Risk In Children. The ACEs Risk In Children dashboards will provide data that pertains to ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) for a selected location.

ACEs include emotional abuse, certain household challenges and physical abuse. The understanding of ACEs came to light through a study that looked at certain events in childhood (such as divorce, neglect and abuse) and the connection between those events and one’s health. In short, the study determined a positive correlation between 10 types of adverse experiences in childhood and detrimental health outcomes.

To launch the dashboards, Kate Hill-Johnson, administrative director of Franciscan Health Community Health Improvement, collaborated with Robert Anda, MD, a physician and author of the original ACEs study, and Laura Porter, a Co-founder of ACES Interface. Together, they envisioned a framework to create self-healing and resilient communities. To get baseline data, Hill-Johnson worked with Tracy Flood, MD, PHD, the CEO of BroadStreet. "When you look at the 10 ACEs you are looking at incarceration, domestic violence, abuse and neglect … a lot of things that may not have direct data," said Hill-Johnson. "So we assessed the data that was available and pulled in what was relevant to create this dashboard."

The dashboards initially were only planned to be available to select staff members within the Franciscan Health system, but Hill-Johnson decided to make the data available nationally instead. "Democratizing data is so important to public health because communities can't come up with solutions if they don't know the problems."

The ACEs Risk In Children dashboards can be set-up for custom areas by anyone via BroadStreet. There will be some variances state-to-state due to how data is collected. Dashboard insights might include things like mental health or incarceration risks in a given community. This aids in cultivating a story about each community to see risk factors and social determinants. The hope is that communities across the nation will be able to use this dashboard to provide guidance in the direction of what public health areas to address.