Family Health History

Family history information is an important risk assessment tool and useful in preventive healthcare. It is a risk tool for a variety of common and chronic diseases and condition showing the impact of shared genetic variation, shared exposures to environmental factors, or shared life style and behaviours. When the family history shows an increased risk, genetic testing may be used as an opportunity to identify high risk individuals for further prevention interventions.

Family risk assessment is measured using the number of family members affected, the degree of closeness of their biological relationship to the individual of interest, life style, environment, and the age at onset of disease in those individuals. Accordingly, individuals are mainly categorized into average-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk groups, and start doing preventive measures for unwanted consequences before it gets too late. As the initial suggestions, people at average risk would be encouraged to follow the standard preventive measures recommended by public health disciplines. Those at moderate or high risk will individually be recommended, for example, risk modification, lifestyle changes, early detection measures etc, and those at high risk will also have to do more genetic tests and assessments for further strategies.

The risk of diseases might be detected using the family history tools that are widely available for various diseases. One of the online tools can be accessed here.