What do you know about your family health history?

Michaela Penix, Eastern Regional Coordinator

Angelina Jolie has recently brought the importance of knowing your family health history to the forefront of many household conversations. Her brave decision to remove her breasts, ovaries, and fallopian tubes as a preventative cancer treatment sparked a national discussion of family health history on news stations and across social media. Federal, state, and local health agencies have been trying to encourage more families to have discussions about family health histories, but it has been a hard sell. Families tend to be afraid of exposing their “business”, or even just afraid to find out what may lie in their future. Despite the reason, not knowing your family health history can certainly affect the quality of life for you and your family.

Imagine if you knew exactly what ailments you might develop over the next 10 years. Now, imagine if there was a guide that told you what you could do to prevent these ailments, or at least delay their onset. That is exactly what a detailed family health history does. When thinking of preconception health, family health histories present an opportunity to address and reduce the risk of health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure that can contribute to poor birth outcomes. According to the National Library of Medicine, complete family health histories include information about health conditions for three generations of relatives, including your parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Presenting this information to your primary care health team allows for a more personalized health care plan to reduce the risk for developing certain health conditions, and planning for future families. Your family health history can even affect your Reproductive Life Plan and overall Life Plan. For example, if you are aware that you have a significant risk of developing diabetes, you may want to delay a pregnancy until you are certain that your weight is healthy and your blood sugars are stable. Your family health history is a tool to help you take charge of your health and your future.

Preconception health is your total health before a pregnancy occurs. Applying the tips for eating healthy, moving more, avoiding tobacco, and limiting alcohol with the empowering knowledge from your family health history, will put you in the best position to be at your healthiest, both now and in the future. The US Surgeon General recommends that family health histories become a part of your Thanksgiving meal each year, and there are online tools available to help you have that discussion with your family. There are also some tips available to help you have a conversation about your family health history in an effective way, and alleviate some of the stress associated with revealing health conditions.

For more information about family health history, check out the March of Dimes Family Health History form, CDC’s Fact Sheet on Family Health Histories, and the US Surgeon General’s Family Health Portrait interactive tool.

References:

March of Dimes - http://www.marchofdimes.org/pregnancy/your-family-health-history.aspx#

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/public/file/print/FamHistFactSheet.pdf

National Library of Medicine - http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/inheritance/familyhistory

US Surgeon General - https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/FHH/html/index.html#