Thanks again for this post - let me elaborate a bit more on my rather terse last message. So, there is consensus it seems that people feel screening should be done – as expressed through guidelines, and you want to find a way to systematize and standardize this screening.
This differs from the traditional framing because as far as I can tell there is no intervention that has been shown to reduce bad outcomes from ACE. But perhaps you could look further into why the guidelines recommend screening. Perhaps even if there is no treatment for ACE that has happened, there is an opportunity to remove children from settings where that is happening? On the one hand it is usual to recommend screening unless something can be done about it. On the other hand this is a problem in which finding interventions will be complicated and take perhaps years, and there might be other actions that can be taken to mitigate the effects of aces – such as screening for early drug use or early sexual debut or risky sexual behavior…
(I think this also illustrates the challenge that face prevention efforts especially those upstream prevention efforts in general. It is difficult to identify the effects of interventions even if those interventions are common sense).
So to be concrete – why don’t you think a little about what you or the community wants clinicians to do with the information. Let’s say they screen for ACE – what next? And what is your opinion about what to do next even if it is not evidence based at the moment… Or do you want to gather more practice –based epidemiological data about ACE? If you can find a way forward with the former it feels more like implementation science, the latter feels less so…
Hope this is useful and I do think your topic is hugely important.