Utilizing Partnerships, Data, and Messaging to Prevent ACEs

November 03, 2025 | Juno Dolan

Over the past year, six states — Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — joined ASTHO's 2024-2025 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Learning Community, focused on the upstream prevention of ACEs. In the past, ASTHO and state partners have explored the connection between ACEs and negative health outcomes as well as the relationship between primary prevention of ACEs and prevention of substance misuse, violence, and suicide. This learning community was solution-focused, with a goal of bringing leaders and partners together to advance relevant ACEs prevention strategies — narrowing in on enhancing partnerships, leveraging data, and strengthening messaging.

What made this learning community unique was its commitment to partnerships. Each state health agency invited at least one partner to join them, from across their own agency, other state agencies, universities, health care organizations, and nonprofits. In total, 16 partners participated in the learning community. This approach ensured states utilized cross-sector collaboration for the upstream prevention of ACEs by encouraging the sharing of data, resources, and best practices, thereby improving support for families and communities.

Enhancing Partnerships

Preventing ACEs requires a coordinated, multi-sector approach that ultimately addresses the root causes of ACEs. An important first step in initiating multi-sector relationships is to enable states to better understand who influences their ACEs work and how they can build stronger relationships with existing partners.

There are a number of innovative partners that states can and should tap into to achieve maximum impact of ACEs prevention work. The learning community supported and helped to strengthen these partnerships by regularly convening participating states and their selected partners, as well as identifying new partners that could help advance their ACEs prevention efforts through stakeholder mapping. One state team developed a partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces and has established a platform for promoting family-friendly work policies to employers.

“[The] diverse professional background of the team members and commitment to ongoing participation will allow us to carry forward ACEs prevention work past the end of the learning community.”

Now that states have established foundations with their initial partners, they can begin planning convenings with a broader group of stakeholders to deepen this collaboration and improve ACEs prevention strategies within their state.

Leveraging Data

A public health approach to preventing ACEs requires leveraging data to identify at-risk populations and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. In addition, data sharing is a crucial aspect of leveraging data, often informing programs and policies aimed at reducing ACEs and preventing their long-term consequences. The learning community worked to improve data collection and build data infrastructure, while also encouraging states to think about the story their data tells.

One state drafted a partner readiness assessment to better understand its state's partner needs. Next, they will field the assessment to partners to inform statewide ACEs prevention strategies, coordination efforts, and resources. Another state is conducting a data walk that will focus on educating its coalition partners and serve as a tool to inform others. Once states determine what data is already accessible or regularly collected, they can explore the story behind the data and their next steps based on these insights.

Strengthening Messaging

Communicating about ACEs can be challenging, but messaging plays a vital role in educating the public about ACEs and other related public health issues. Strategic framing of ACEs involves emphasizing solutions and resilience, as well as sharing responsibility.

Learning community states worked on messaging development, which involves naming the problem, explaining why it matters, highlighting the solution, and synthesizing these elements into a single cohesive message. States emphasized different points in their messaging, including a data walk, coordination, mental health, ACEs awareness, developing healthy families, and family-friendly workplaces.

“Increased ACEs negatively impact working families and the economy by affecting the physical and mental health of the workforce. [Research shows] a 10% reduction in the U.S. prevalence of ACEs equates to an annual savings of three million disability-adjusted life years or $105 billion.”

With this foundation, states are positioned to refine their communication strategies and build sustainable messages that resonate across sectors.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

The states identified learning community successes, including:

• Improving inter-agency collaboration. Developing external partnerships to continue ACEs prevention work.
• Completing a partner readiness assessment.
• Identifying all agency projects related to ACEs prevention.
• Gaining a better understanding of ACEs prevention messaging for different audiences.

“Due to this learning collaborative, we have taken active steps to enhance collaboration within our agency while also looping in necessary partners in this work. We have a meeting scheduled with leadership to identify next steps beyond this learning collaborative to apply what we have learned to our work.”

ACEs Learning Community participants also shared several key takeaways:

• Engaging partners early enhanced overall collaboration.
• Clear messaging is essential to advancing ACEs prevention.
• Offering a menu of technical assistance allowed for tailored, state-specific support.
• Action plans helped solidify and define next steps/goals to continue this work.

Moving forward, some states plan to convene data work groups, while others will focus on areas like communication, planning, and policy alignment. One state hopes to strengthen ACEs and Positive Childhood Experiences data collection, while another wants to advance statewide collaboration on family-friendly work policies.

ACEs prevention work is complex, but through data, clear communication, and most of all, partnerships, states are laying the foundation for healthier families and communities in the years to come.