Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with IHeart Radio.

I was seeing kids coming in with chest pain. I was seeing kids with autoimmune disease, just off the charts.

And, you know, most of these kids were black and brown kids. And I just didn't believe the myth that somehow these people are sicker or because they're low income, they're sicker.

I'm like, what if we're all the same?

And these kids are not fundamentally broken, but they're showing a normal biological response to a harmful experience.

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Laverne Cox Show.

I'm Laverne Cox.

Today I am really excited. to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox.

Today, I am really excited and nervous to be talking to the Surgeon General of California.

And the reason I'm so nervous, but also excited, is because this person's work has really illuminated and helped explain a lot of what has been going on with me my whole life. A few years ago, my therapist said to me,

you should go to this website and take this quiz and find out your ACE score. And I'm like,

Aces, what are you talking about?

And she said, Aces is an acronym for adverse childhood experiences.

Adverse childhood experiences can have effects on us throughout our lives,

not only in terms of our mental health and our behavioral capacities, but also our physical health.

Toxic stress, PTSD has health consequences.

People with high ACE scores have a higher rate of heart disease, diabetes, and more.

The person who has brought the ACEs research to the masses, arguably is the Surgeon General of California, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris.

Nading Burke Harris is an award-winning physician, researcher, and California's first ever Surgeon General.

After graduating from Stanford, she turned down multiple job offers to work in the most underserved part of San Francisco,

where she founded the Center for Youth Wellness,

an organization leading the effort to advance pediatric medicine, raise public awareness,

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