Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity

The Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA) at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences has been awarded $9.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to support a second five-year phase of research and resource development focused on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). CIRCA's work addresses ACEs, a leading public health problem linked to poor mental and physical health, substance use and other health-harming behaviors that can be transmitted across generations.

The center emphasizes the urgency of understanding how childhood adversity shapes developing neurobiological systems and how protective experiences can buffer those effects. CIRCA's mission builds on a prior NIH investment: in 2016 the center received $11.3 million for phase 1 to build research infrastructure in northeast Oklahoma. That initial phase focused on creating the capacity to study ACEs locally; the newly awarded phase 2 funding will expand and strengthen a sustainable center that supports researchers through mentoring and a research core. The phase 2 program is intended to provide the mentoring and core resources necessary for investigators to examine the effects of ACEs across multiple biological and behavioral systems and to identify more effective strategies to prevent and treat the impacts of childhood adversity. The center's leadership highlights the scale and significance of the challenge: ACEs include child abuse and neglect as well as parental mental illness, domestic violence, incarceration, substance abuse and divorce, affecting more than 60 percent of Americans.

CIRCA also notes that Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of ACEs in the United States, underscoring the local and regional imperative for robust research and intervention development. In conveying the stakes, Hays-Grudo points to the economic burden of ACEs, citing an estimated North American cost exceeding $750 billion annually in preventable health care costs. The phase 2 funding aims to translate the capabilities built during phase 1 into sustained research programs that probe the biological mechanisms by which adversity impacts development and to identify protective experiences and interventions that can mitigate harm. By growing research capacity, providing mentoring, and strengthening core support, CIRCA seeks to enable investigators to pursue multidisciplinary studies that span neurobiology, behavior, and clinical implications. The overall goal of the continued NIH-supported effort is to deepen understanding of how childhood adversity operates across systems and over time and to use that knowledge to inform more effective prevention and treatment approaches that reduce the long-term health and social consequences of ACEs for individuals, families and communities.