1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Alleviating Adverse Childhood Experiences Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Adverse childhood experiences include emotional and physical neglect and abuse, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation or divorce, and having an incarcerated household member. (2) Findings from the adverse childhood experiences study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have shown that adverse childhood experiences predispose children toward negative trajectories from infancy into adulthood. (3) As the number of adverse childhood experiences increases so does the risk for myocardial infarction, asthma, mental distress, depression, smoking, disability, unemployment, lowered educational attainment, opioid abuse, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. (4) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adults who had been exposed to more than one adverse childhood experience were significantly more likely to be unemployed, to be living in poverty, and not to have graduated high school than adults who had not experienced an adverse childhood experience. (5) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found that just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment costs $124,000,000,000 over the lifetime of the traumatized children. These include increases in childhood health care costs, adult medical costs, productivity losses, child welfare costs, criminal justice costs, and special education costs. (6) Home visiting programs, pediatric-based services and informed, evidence-based approaches have been proven to prevent and mitigate the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences on children and families. (7) Participants in the Nurse-Family Partnership’s home visiting program have shown a 48 percent reduction in State-verified reports of child abuse and neglect by age 15, a 67 percent reduction in behavioral and emotional problems by age 6, and a 59