Family Violence

My family endured many hardships during the Marxist military dictatorship (Derg regime) in Ethiopia: my uncles and mother were imprisoned at a young age, some of my cousins
“disappeared,” and younger male family members were forced to serve in the army. The country bore all kinds of human cruelty and violations during the reign of then president Mengistu Haile
Mariam. The image of dead bodies decaying in the alleys on my mother’s route to school haunts her to this day. I was born in the capital city of Ethiopia—Addis Ababa—a couple of years after the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front overthrew the Derg regime. When two of my uncles fled to Kenya in the late eighties to join hundreds of Ethiopians in refugee camps, they hoped

I knew these were important public health issues, but it was not until I started my master’s project as an
Epidemiology Master of Public Health (MPH) candidate at the University of Minnesota that I became interested in family violence and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). My master’s thesis explored the effects of a culturally competent, faith-based intervention on reducing intimate partner violence (IPV) and child violence in Tanzanian HIV discordant households.
Although my thesis primarily focused on the impact of the intervention on family violence, I read literature around ACEs during my preliminary research for my paper. In much of the literature, perpetrators of IPV and child violence were more likely to have relatively high rates

Because ACEs are so common and are associated with several health outcomes—such as heart disease, depression, substance use, and obesity— it is a topic that concerns me deeply as someone interested in public health.
Upon graduating from the School of Public Health this past summer, I started a new position as the Evaluation and Community Education Manager at Prevent Child Abuse
Minnesota. Prevent Child Abuse Minnesota has an ACE Interface program that uses the curriculum created by Dr. Robert Anda, co-principal investigator of the ACEs Study, and Laura
Porter, experienced leader of community-based and policy-level application of ACEs-Related
Science. This curriculum has been spread to thousands across the state by community members trained to present on the impact of ACEs on brain development, the ACE study, and building resilience. In my current position, I oversee the certification of our network of ACE presenters and the evaluation efforts for a newly funded project, which seeks to quickly disseminate our
ACE Interface training to communities connected with Minnesota’s Children’s Mental Health and Family Services Collaboratives. Additionally, I have participated in discussions within