ACEs
With focus on ACEs and smart policy, conference aims to change story of NM children
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Amber Wallin is all about the numbers. After all, she manages New Mexico Voices for Children’s annual Kids Count databook and oversees the organization’s research and policy work. But there is one number she had never tallied before: Her ACE score. The second annual Southern New Mexico Kids Count Conference held Wednesday in the Las Cruces Convention Center put its focus this year on childhood trauma and preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences, something that affects New Mexico kids at the highest rate in the nation, and which can have lifelong effects on physical and emotional health, and learning. Her total: five ACEs.