>> Module two, lesson one.
Risk and Protective Factors.
In this lesson, we'll discuss a variety of social
and ecological factors that can influence a child's risk
for ACEs, including those that can help protect a child
from adverse experiences.
No single factor explains why some individuals are exposed
to early adversities or why ACEs are more prevalent
in some communities than in others.
Rather, exposure to early adversity is the result
of a complex web of individual, interpersonal, social, cultural,
and environmental factors.
The CDC uses the social ecological model
to help unravel this complex web.
The model has four levels: individual, relational,
community, and societal.
The individual level includes personal characteristics
and biological factors like age and sex.
This level also includes personal history,
the experiences that influence how a person thinks and acts.
The relational level includes interactions between people
in close relationships
like family members and care providers.
As people age, different types of relationships
and social groups will influence their attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors.
The community level includes settings
or institutions outside the home like schools, neighborhoods,
and workplaces where social relationships take place.
The characteristics of these settings influence how people
interact with each other.
The societal level includes factors like laws, policies,
media, and other social forces that influence shared values
and social norms such as the acceptance
or rejection of violence.
These societal level factors also influence differing levels
of access and opportunities available to groups
of people within a society.
>> We all live in a social ecology.
We have us as individuals, our own genetic makeup
and biological makeup and our individual beliefs and values.
And each of us exists within a family of relationships
and we have peers that we interact with
and they influence our behavior.
And then we all exist within communities, another level
of the social ecology in which it has a certain level
of services and there may be --
we may live in communities
with high crime rates or low crime rates.
So those communities influence us as well.
And then we exist within society that has social norms
and other broad factors that influence the likelihood
that we are to experience all sorts of things in our lives.
So this social ecology is really important
for understanding all sorts of behaviors
but also adverse childhood experiences.
Each of these levels
of the social ecology influences our likelihood
of experiencing those things.
If we live in a community, for example, without many services
or without programs to prevent child abuse and neglect,
we may be more likely to experience that adversity.
If we live in families that -- where our parents were subjected
to child abuse and neglect as children, we may be more likely
to experience that as a child.
So the social ecology is important for us conceptualizing
and understanding a problem like adverse childhood experiences
and thinking about how we can prevent it.
>> The children in families really develop within a context.
And by a context we mean yes, the home environment,
the community environment,
but there is a broader sociopolitical environment.
There is some conditions that really support children
and families to grow, to thrive, to be healthy and productive
and others that don't so much.
So, for example, from a societal approach,
there are various policies like providing economic supports
to families that can really help alleviate some of the stressors
that really make it really difficult to parent
in the most loving, warm,
research focused way, if you will.
>> This socio-ecological model has been helpful in being able
to understand and explain that health is impacted both
at the individual level, at the relationship and family level,
and in communities and society and that we have
to address all the layers in order
to achieve the best health outcomes for individuals,
for families, and for entire communities and societies.
But what we also know is that the conditions in the community
and societal level aren't the same for all groups,
that some groups have more access
to healthy community conditions and societal policies
that benefit their health.
And other groups have less access
to healthy living conditions or societal policies
that support their health and well-being.
>> When it comes to ACEs, risk and protective factors exist
across the social ecological model.
A risk factor is any attribute, characteristic,
or exposure that increases the likelihood
that a certain outcome will occur.
In this case, risk factors increase the likelihood
that someone will experience ACEs.
Examples of risk factors
for childhood adversity include poverty,
exposure to community violence, and poor social connections.
Protective factors, on the other hand, mitigate
or offset the impact of risk factors
that might lead to poor outcomes.
Today, we're focused on protective factors
that reduce exposure to ACEs or buffer their impact.
Examples of protective factors include supportive family
networks, communities that support parents,
and access to social services.
Take some time to explore factors that are known
to put children at risk for ACEs.