Population Health

Collecting a family history

2 Min Read

family health history (PDF) helps physicians and other health care practitioners provide better care for patients. 

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A properly collected family history can:

  • Identify whether a patient has a higher risk for a disease.
  • Help the health care practitioner recommend treatments or other options to reduce a patient’s risk of disease.
  • Provide early warning signs of disease.
  • Help plan lifestyle changes to keep the patient well. 

A family history (PDF) is a lifetime record that patients should provide to all their new physicians when receiving health care.

The history should be detailed, including:

  • First-, 2nd- and 3rd-degree relatives
  • Age for all relatives (age at time of death for the deceased)
  • Ethnicity (some genetic diseases are more common in certain ethnic groups)
  • Presence of chronic diseases

Patients can access the “My Family Health Portrait” to:

  • Enter their family health history.
  • Learn about their risk for conditions that can run in families.
  • Print their family health history to share with family or their health care provider.
  • Save their family health history so they can update it over time.

Patient questionnaires (PDF) can provide useful material to physicians who want to gather information from a couple either prior to pregnancy or during a pregnancy.  

Other questionnaires (PDF) can help the health care professional get the necessary history of a child in order to help with a diagnosis and treatment plan.

From Geisinger Health System

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