Module 2, Lesson 1, 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. This is 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. and which has a certain level of services. And 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 a 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. We live in families 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. Children and families really develop within a context. Melissa Merrick. Yes, the home environment, the community environment, but there is a broader sociopolitical environment. There are 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. The socioecological model has been helpful in being able to understand and explain. Marilyn Metzler. 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.