Introduction: Violence against children is still a serious problem for most countries including Moldova. During the last years in Moldova were done few researches that evaluate prevalence of different forms of violence among children and young people, but the relationship of health risk behavior and health problems in young adulthood to the breadth of exposure to childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. and household dysfunction during childhood has not previously been described. To assess the association among adverse childhood experiences, health-risk behaviors, and health problems in yang people in Moldova was decided to organize a Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. This study aims to determine the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences and their influence on health behaviours and problems, by collecting data on adverse experiences during the first 18 years of life of young people from the Republic of Moldova, students of higher education institutions. The study sought to analyze the association between exposure to adverse childhood experiences and the involvement in risk behaviours and health problems in young adulthood, and identified the risk factors and the burden of adverse childhood experiences in a sample of young adults. Materials and methods: This is a transversal and retrospective self-assessment study. The questionnaire was applied on a sample of 1678 students, in 14 higher educational institutions from the Republic of Moldova. 1534 out of the total number of collected questionnaires were validated, with response rate 91%. Out of the total number of validated questionnaires. 598 (39%) were filled in by males and 936 (61%) – by young females. Results: The study indicates that most of respondents, university students from the Republic of Moldova, (59.6%) experienced one or more ACEs during the first 18 years of life. These are more often encountered in males (62.4%) than in females (57.8%). The most frequent types of negative childhood events were the psychological/emotional abuse (16.7% of females and 12.3% of males), psychological neglect of basic needs (13.8% of females and 11.5% of males), as well as the phenomenon of ‘normalization’ of physical abuse for disciplinary purpose, declared about 2.5 times frequently than the physical abuse as such. The most frequent mentioned dysfunction encountered by the respondents in their families was the divorce or separation of parents – in about one fifth of cases (20.9% in females’ families and less frequent in males’ families – 17.3%). Data analysis clearly highlights that risky heath behaviours are more frequently met in young people who were subjected to adverse childhood experiences than in those who were not subjected to such experiences, and increase proportionally with the number of such experiences. Conclusions: The study noted an increased prevalence of a range of health problems. and a decreased capacity of social mainstreaming. Early intervention and prevention of child maltreatment. as well as actions taken to enhance families’ functionality were recommended to narrow the prevalence of risk behaviours and morbidity during adult life.