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Notice to Readers: National Family History Day --- Thanksgiving Day
Beginning in 2004, Thanksgiving Day was declared
National Family History Day by the U.S. Surgeon General
to encourage families to discuss their health histories.
Although 96% of persons in the United States believe that
knowing their family history is important, only one third of them have ever tried to gather and write down their family
health history (1).
The Office of the Surgeon General, in collaboration with several agencies in the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, developed a tool for recording family health information (available at
https://familyhistory.hhs.gov). In addition, in 2002, CDC's
National Office of Public Health Genomics (NOPHG) launched the Family History
Public Health Initiative, which collaborates with government agencies, public health organizations, universities, and the
private sector to assess and promote the use of family history for improving the health of the U.S. population. Family
history resources and tools are available from NOPHG at
http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/public/famhist.htm.
To extend this initiative to children, CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities sponsored a meeting in 2006 to assess the use of family history information in pediatric primary care and to
evaluate medical conditions that could serve as models for using this information in pediatric and public health settings
(2). A supplement to the September 2007 issue of
Pediatrics contains articles based on the findings from the meeting. Access
to the Pediatrics supplement and additional information
regarding the 2006 meeting are available at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/family_history.htm.
References
US Department of Health and Human Services. U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative. Washington, DC: US Department of Health
and Human Services; 2006. Available at
http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory.
Green RF. Summary of workgroup meeting on use of family history information in pediatric primary care and public health.
Pediatrics 2007;120(Suppl 2):S87--100.
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Health and Human Services.References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
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Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
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the date of publication.
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