Correlation between growth and adverse childhood experiences in vulnerable children in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract

Adverse Childhood Experiences impact behaviors, health, quality of life and mortality. While there are reports of the effects of ACEs on growth, this relationship has not been investigated in the preschool population. This study analyzes the association between ACEs and weight-for-height, weight-for-age, and height-for-age in 141 preschool children in a vulnerable zone of Bogota, Colombia. Analysis with IBM SPSS Statistics 21.0 software revealed no correlation between ACE scores and compromised anthropometric measurements. However, the population as a whole shows a significant growth alteration, particularly for height-for-age. We conclude that structural determinants of health, such as poverty, have more impact on growth than ACE exposure in this kind of population.