View Family History Poster
Many common conditions, including cancer, heart disease, and diabetes mellitus, as well as less common conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and sickle cell anemia, can run in families. Tracing the health problems of your parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins, and extended family members can help your health care providers determine diagnostic and treatment options to keep you healthy.
The importance of family health history is recognized by the U.S. Surgeon General. The initiative to encourage all families to learn more about their family health history focuses on Thanksgiving as National Family History Day. This begins a time when families get together for holidays and can learn about their health history.
Because family history is such a powerful screening tool, the Surgeon General has created a tool called "My Family Health Portrait" which can be downloaded for free and installed on your computer. This program helps you organize your family tree and identify the conditions that run in your family. You can print out a graphical chart of your family tree, as well as a table listing family members and their health issues.
A new, revised 2009 version of the tool, "My Family Health Portrait" is a web-enabled program that runs on any computer that is 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 the 2005 version.
