Adverse childhood experiences and adult health
Pennsylvania statewide
As published by the state
36.0% (34.0 to 38.0)
Emotional/Verbal Abuse, 2021, adults
This dashboard (CDC files)
34.8%
Emotional/Verbal Abuse, all CDC years pooled, n = 10,665
About this data
EDDIE: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Adverse Childhood Experiences
Pennsylvania Department of Health, Health Informatics Office. Pennsylvania BRFSS. 2014, 2016, 2019, 2021. 11 measures. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
Direct estimates on the same questions as the dashboard's CDC-derived Pennsylvania values for 2019; 2014, 2016 and 2021 are years CDC's public files do not carry for Pennsylvania. The Department advises that 2011 begins a trend break, which does not affect these years.
Publisher's pageEmotional/Verbal Abuse by area
2021, adults; ranked
Areas are ranked by the published value and each bar takes its area's map color; hover or focus a row for its 95% confidence interval where the publisher gave one. The tick is the statewide figure from the same source. Areas the publisher withheld show as "--".
Percent (%)
Philadelphia County
41.0
Northwest
37.0
South Central
37.0
Southeast (excluding Philadelphia County)
37.0
Southwest (excluding Allegheny County)
34.0
Allegheny County
34.0
North Central
33.0
Northeast
31.0
Selected area
· 2021, adults
Each bar is the value the state published for this area; hover or focus a row for its 95% confidence interval where one was published. The tick is the statewide value from the same source. A measure not asked in the selected years shows its latest.
Select an area on the map.
The ACE score follows CDC's scoring of the BRFSS ACE module, collapsing 11 survey items into 8 categories: sexual abuse (3 items), physical abuse, substance abuse (2 items), emotional abuse, witnessed intimate partner violence, household mental illness, incarceration, and parental divorce. Only respondents with valid responses to all 11 survey items are scored. The average is weighted using BRFSS survey weights to be representative of each state's adult population.
Survey years 2009 through 2012 and 2019 onward are pooled. One caution about comparing across that gap: CDC changed the wording of the physical-abuse question between the two periods. Even in states that took part in both periods, the share of adults who reported it was about nine percentage points higher from 2019 onward than in 2009 through 2012. The question about adults hurting each other barely changed, and no other ACE question rose by more than about half as much. So physical abuse, and to a lesser degree the overall score, cannot be compared cleanly across the two periods.
Age matters when comparing states: older adults report fewer ACEs and have more long-term health conditions, and states differ in how old their adults are. Figures on the Explore page are not adjusted for age, so differences between states there partly reflect age. The Compare page adjusts for age by default (to the 2000 U.S. standard population), so every state is compared as if it had the same mix of ages, and it can be switched to show unadjusted figures.
Higher scores indicate more types of adversity experienced during childhood. Read more about adverse childhood experiences.
The ACE score follows CDC's scoring of the BRFSS ACE module, collapsing 11 survey items into 8 categories: sexual abuse (3 items), physical abuse, substance abuse (2 items), emotional abuse, witnessed intimate partner violence, household mental illness, incarceration, and parental divorce. Only respondents with valid responses to all 11 survey items are scored. The average is weighted using BRFSS survey weights to be representative of each state's adult population.
Survey years 2009 through 2012 and 2019 onward are pooled. One caution about comparing across that gap: CDC changed the wording of the physical-abuse question between the two periods. Even in states that took part in both periods, the share of adults who reported it was about nine percentage points higher from 2019 onward than in 2009 through 2012. The question about adults hurting each other barely changed, and no other ACE question rose by more than about half as much. So physical abuse, and to a lesser degree the overall score, cannot be compared cleanly across the two periods.
Age matters when comparing states: older adults report fewer ACEs and have more long-term health conditions, and states differ in how old their adults are. Figures on the Explore page are not adjusted for age, so differences between states there partly reflect age. The Compare page adjusts for age by default (to the 2000 U.S. standard population), so every state is compared as if it had the same mix of ages, and it can be switched to show unadjusted figures.
Higher scores indicate more types of adversity experienced during childhood. Read more about adverse childhood experiences.