To examine the associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and children's obesogenic behaviors (meeting recommendations for sleep duration and screen time) in a representative sample of U.S. children and adolescents. This study assessed data from the 2019-2020 National Survey of Children's Health. Separate multinomial logistic regressions examined the likelihood of failing to meet sleep and screen time recommendations given individual and cumulative ACE scores. 15,581 children (48% female, 32% non-White) experienced one ACE, representing 32% of the analyzed sample. Parents reported financial hardship as the most prevalent ACE (48%). After adjusting for child race/ethnicity, sex of the child, highest education in the household, and child age, we found that participants with four or more ACEs were (1) age-specific sleep recommendations compared with participants with zero ACEs (OR 1.96; 95%CI = 1.64-2.35), and (2) more likely to fall short of meeting screen use recommendations compared with participants with zero ACEs (OR 1.61; 95%CI = 1.26-2.07). U.S. children and adolescents who have experienced four or more ACEs are significantly more likely to fall short of sleep and screen time recommendations compared to their counterparts who experienced zero ACEs. Given the strong associations between ACEs and health outcomes in adulthood, screening for ACEs may better inform practitioners when attempting to improve youth health outcomes.
Keywords: Adversity; Screentime; Sleep; Trauma; Youth.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.