NIH State-of-the-Science Conference: Family History and Improving Health - Day 3 |
|
---|---|
View event: | You will be able to view the event at http://videocast.nih.gov when the event is live. |
Air date: | Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 9:00:00 AM |
iCalendar: | Add an upcoming event to your calendar. |
Description: | Many common diseases have genetic, environmental, and lifestyle causes that family members may share. An individual’s family health history captures information about shared factors that contribute to that individual’s risk for developing diseases such as diabetes, stroke, cancer, and heart disease. Family health history information collected from patients has long been used as a risk assessment tool by health care providers in the United States. Family history is also critical to determining who will benefit from genetic testing for both common and rare conditions, and can facilitate interpretation of genetic test results. The combination of these attributes makes the collection of family history an important first step in personalized medicine.
Recently there have been a number of national efforts to ensure that family history information is effectively incorporated into health information technology systems including electronic health records and personal health record systems. An ultimate goal of these efforts will be to provide clinicians with automated clinical decision tools based on family history information; this will require a sound scientific foundation on which to develop such tools. Although most individuals are accustomed to providing some form of family history information when they visit health professionals, there is wide variation in the way family history is collected and used by health care providers. Moreover, the accuracy of a patient-gathered history may be limited by an individual’s awareness, understanding, and recollection of their family members’ health issues. Important questions remain regarding the effectiveness of family history information for disease prediction and improvement of patient health outcomes. There may also be adverse effects for both individuals and society, thus far not fully understood, of depending too heavily on a family history to assess disease risk. It is possible that emphasizing family history may have economic costs as well, as limited resources are allocated across a wide variety of health promotion activities in the primary care setting. In order to take a closer look at this important topic, the National Human Genome Research Institute and the Office of Medical Applications of Research of the National Institutes of Health will convene a State-of-the-Science conference from August 24 to 26, 2009, to assess the available scientific evidence related to the following questions:
|
Author: | Sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Office of Medical Applications of Research (OMAR) |
Runtime: | 120 minutes |
CIT File ID: | None |
CIT Live ID: | 7536 |