Thirty years ago, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing gave a series of lectures, later published in a book, “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside,” in which she reflected on the brutality in the world and asked how individuals and societies could evolve into something better.

It’s a sobering book, but Lessing is hopeful — and her main source of hope stems from the capacity of human beings to study themselves and learn from their own behavior. “I think when people look back at our time, they will be amazed at one thing more than any other,” she writes. “It is this — that we do know more about ourselves now than other people did in the past, but that very little of this knowledge has been put into effect.”

Last week, and the week before, I reported on efforts over the past two decades to put more of this kind of knowledge into effect. Specifically, I examined how community-based networks were sharing research with professionals and residents in numerous communities, about how the effects of childhood trauma — so-called adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs — substantially increase risks for a range of negative outcomes, including dropping out of school, abusing drugs, becoming depressed, committing suicide, and being a victim of, or a perpetrator, of violence or abuse. (For information about ACEs, including the landmark ACE study and “ACE scores,” see these infographics and resources.)

This research didn’t exist when Lessing gave her lectures in 1985, and it’s still largely unknown to Americans, much like cholesterol was before the 1980s. But social scientists now see it as a major factor behind an array of social ills and chronic diseases. And today, a growing network of health care professionals, educators, government officials, social service workers and community leaders are working to get knowledge about ACEs into public consciousness.