U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative
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Health care professionals have known for a long time that common
diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and even rare diseases
- like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in
families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is
not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood
pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents,
and other blood relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to
which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family
healthy.
To help focus attention on the importance of family health history,
U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., in cooperation
with other agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) has launched a national public health campaign, called
the U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative, to encourage all
American families to learn more about their family health history.
In addition to the Office of the Surgeon General, other HHS agencies
involved in this project include the National Human Genome Research
Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA).
My Family Health Portrait
Access My Family Health Portrait web version
Americans know that family history is important to health. A recent
survey found that 96 percent of Americans believe that knowing their
family history is important. Yet, the same survey found that only
one-third of Americans have ever tried to gather and write down their
family's health history.
Because family health history is such a powerful screening tool, the
Surgeon General has created a new computerized tool to help make it fun
and easy for anyone to create a sophisticated portrait of their
family's health.
This new, revised version of the tool, called "My Family Health
Portrait" is a web-enabled program that runs on any computer that's
connected to the web and running an up-to-date version of any major
Internet browser. The new version of the tools offers numerous
advantages over last year's version, which had to be downloaded to
the user's computer, but only those running the Microsoft Windows
operating system.
The web-based tool helps users organized family history information and
then print it out for presentation to the family doctor. In addition,
the tool helps users save their family history information to their own
computer and even share family history information with other family
members. The tool can be accessed at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/.
The U.S. Surgeon General makes the tool freely available to all users.
No user information is saved on any computer of the U.S. federal
government. See the Privacy and Security Policy on the tool for more
information.
When you are finished organizing your family history information, the
tool will create and print out a graphical representation of your
family's generations and the health disorders that may have moved from
one generation to the next. That is a powerful tool for predicting any
illnesses for which you should be checked.
National Family History Day, 2005
Surgeon General Carmona has declared Thanksgiving 2005 to be the second
annual National Family History Day. Thanksgiving is the traditional
start of the holiday season for most Americans.
Whenever families gather, the Surgeon General encourages them to talk
about, and to write down, the health problems that seem to run in their
family. Learning about their family's health history may help ensure a
longer future together.
Surgeon General's Family History Initiative Press Conference
The new tool was released on Nov. 15, 2005 during a press conference at
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. A webcast
presentation of the Surgeon General's Family History Initiative Press
Conference is available for download here. To get a free Real Player,
click here.
For information on other activities of the Office of the Surgeon
General, please visit www.surgeongeneral.gov.