A family health history is a valuable tool in medicine. Knowing your family's health history can help you identify genetic risk factors that you may have. This information can then be used to form an individual disease prevention program. Even though almost everyone knows family health history is important, not very many people take the time to collect the information. To increase the awareness of the importance of collecting a family health history, the US Surgeon General and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have launched a national public health campaign called the US Surgeon General's Family History Initiative.

The HHS has created an easy-to-use, computerized family tree health program call "My Family Health Portrait." Information can be stored on your computer and printed to be shared with doctors and other health care providers. You can add or change information any time. Parents, brothers, sisters, and children should be included. Other important relatives include grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, half-brothers, and half-sisters. If you can, include cousins, great-aunts, and great-uncles. Each member should have date of birth, date of death, cause of death, health problems, and any other known health information. Place of birth and ethnicity should also be included. Ethnicity is important to identify conditions that are race-specific. For example African Americans are at greater risk for sickle cell anemia, high blood pressure and prostate cancer. Major conditions that should be identified include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, colon cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer. Other significant diseases include cystic fibrosis, depression, mental illness, hearing loss, vision loss, rheumatoid arthritis, and auto-immune diseases like lupus. Once the information is collected, it should be shared with your doctors and other family members.

The 2004 HealthStyles Survey by the Center for Disease Control showed that 96% of respondents recognize the importance of a family health history but only 30% had actively collected health information from their relatives. With advances in genetic profiling made possible by the Human Genome Project, health care is entering a promising era for disease prevention and treatment. As an example of how family health history information can be used, a recent three-generational study for depression showed that parental and grandparental depression was associated with 5.5 times the relative risk for depression in the grandchildren. Knowing this can help health care providers monitor patients for early warning signs and early treatment of depression.

My Family Health Portrait is available free of charge at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/.

Reference: Pharmacist's Letter, December 2005, vol. 21, no. 211214

PICK OF THE WEEK: ALL TAOS PHARMACY PRIVATE LABEL HERBS AND SUPPLEMENTS ARE 15% OFF UNTIL FEBRUARY 2, 2006.

[Return to Archive Index]

[PageTop]