New Family Health History Projects
Washington, D.C. - As part of the effort to educate all Americans about the importance of knowing their family health histories, Acting Surgeon General Kenneth P. Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H., recently announced two new outreach projects involving Alaska Native and urban Appalachian communities.
Many diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, can run in families. Health care professionals can use your family health history to help predict the disorders for which you may be at risk. Such information can help health care professionals develop more individualized strategies for keeping you and your family healthy.
To make it easier to compile a family health history, the Office of the Surgeon General has created a free, Web-based tool that organizes family health information into a printout that people can take to health care professionals to help determine whether they are at higher risk for disease. The recently redesigned tool, "My Family Health Portrait," is available in English and in Spanish at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/. "My Family Health Portrait" tool is Web-based, which allows it to be operated on all computers with Internet access running any of several standard browsers, regardless of the computer's operating system. All personal information entered into the program resides on the user's computer only. No information is available to the federal government or any other agency.
Since the Surgeon General's Family Health Initiative was begun in November 2004, more than 1 million users are believed to have accessed the Web-based version or downloaded copies of the "My Family Health Portrait" tool from the Department of Health and Human Services Web site. In addition, more than 100,000 printed copies of the tool have been distributed nationwide. Department of Health and Human Services agencies that are partnering with the Surgeon General in the family history public health campaign are: NIH-NHGRI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Building upon the foundation laid by the Surgeon General's Family History Initiative, NHGRI also named two new Family History demonstration projects – focused on Alaska Native and urban Appalachian populations. The one-year projects, each of which will receive $100,000, will develop community-based models to increase awareness among the public and health care professionals about the value of family history information in promoting health and preventing disease.
The new projects will expand upon what is being learned in NHGRI's Family History demonstration project at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. That effort, launched in November 2005, is believed to have been encouraging and evaluating the voluntary use of the Surgeon General's "My Family Health Portrait" tool among the hospital's more than 12,000 employees. The workforce of the 747-bed hospital includes physicians, nurses, administrative, service and management staff. This month, the Brigham and Women's Family History Project is expanding to include non-employee patients and their families. The project's Web site, http://www.brighamandwomens.org/familyhistory, will post results of the yearlong project as they become available after the conclusion of the employee survey on Nov. 30.
In addition to the Web-based tool, printable, PDF versions and other resources related to the Surgeon General's Family Health Initiative are available at http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/. New materials for 2006 include a printable PDF brochure entitled "Before You Start" and a redesigned, user-friendly PDF version of the tool, both of which are available in English and Spanish. Other new additions include links to printable PDF versions of the tool in Chinese, Polish, Portuguese and French, which were produced by translators with the Brigham and Women's Family History project.
SOURCE: Office of the Surgeon General