Angela Narayan, PhD | University of Denver
Competition Sponsor: National Academy of Medicine
Awardee Year: 2024
For the past 25 years, the fields of medicine, psychology, and public health have emphasized the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on adulthood health problems, poorer longevity, and earlier mortality. The ACE literature has shaped a powerful narrative on preventing ACEs in children to reduce risk for lifespan health problems. Unfortunately, this narrative takes a “doom and gloom” approach and is often misrepresented as “those who experience ACEs will have poorer health outcomes and premature death. ” This narrative is overly deterministic, pessimistic, and harmful, particularly to marginalized individuals who experience structural racism and systemic oppression, which render them particularly vulnerable to ACEs. This study will change this narrative to become “in spite of ACEs, positive childhood experiences (PCEs) promote long-term resilience and healthier longevity. ” This project’s first aim will leverage two large datasets (N = 550 and N = 1,250) to examine whether, after accounting for effects of ACEs, higher levels of PCEs associate with fewer serious health problems across childhood and adulthood and less chronic pain and pain impairment. This second dataset will provide a test-retest replication, controlling for COVID-related stressors in a sample collected in late 2020. The second and third aims will recruit a new sample of adults with marginalized identities to test the hypotheses that higher levels of adults’ PCEs associate with healthier longevity, operationalized as a) fewer lifespan physical health problems; and b) higher life satisfaction, over and above effects of ACEs. This aim will also test whether higher levels of adults’ parents’ PCEs are associated with parents’ a) fewer lifespan physical health problems, b) higher life satisfaction, and c) their longer lifespan, over and above the effects of parents’ ACEs. This study will provide a novel proof of concept that higher PCEs relate to healthier longevity across two generations and help reframe the narrative that PCEs are healthy-promoting resources for marginalized communities.