Category: family history

Happy Thanksgiving 2019: Collect and Share Your Family Health History: It Could Save Your Life!

a multi generational family sharing a Thanksgiving meal

Happy Thanksgiving Day! It is time for our yearly message on the importance of family health history to your own health. Year after year we promote the value on family health history around Thanksgiving day and all year round. By knowing and acting on your family history, you can reduce your disease risk and actually Read More >

Posted on by Muin J Khoury, Director, Office of Genomics and Precision Public Health, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics

Happy Thanksgiving 2018: Protect your family’s health by using My Family Health Portrait to collect and share your family health history

a multigenerational familly eating a thanksgiving meal and a picture of DNA is hanging on the wall

Happy Thanksgiving Day! It is time to send our yearly message on the importance of family health history to your own health. Every year we emphasize a slightly different version of this message. In 2017, we highlighted the simple fact that even in the age of genomics and precision medicine, family health history remains as Read More >

Posted on by Muin J Khoury, Director, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics
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Announcing a New CDC Home for the U.S. Surgeon General’s Family Health History Tool

screenshot of the My Family Health Portrait located within the CDC PHGKB database

On Thanksgiving Day 2004, the U.S. Surgeon General launched a national public health campaign called the U.S. Surgeon General’s Family History Initiative. The campaign quickly became a yearly event to raise public awareness about the importance of family health history, and encourage all families to learn more about their health histories. The initiative also launched Read More >

Posted on by Muin J. Khoury, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Laura Lyman Rodriguez, Division of Policy, Communications and Education, National Human Genome Research InstituteLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics
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The Impact of Family History on the Public Health Burden of Diagnosed Diabetes, Undiagnosed Diabetes and Prediabetes in the United States: Using Family History for Diabetes Control and Prevention

a multigenerational family with glucose strips and a person holding a glucose meter and DNA in the foreground

This blog post is a summary of our recently published paper in Genetics in Medicine. Type 2 diabetes is a major public health problem in the United States and globally. Among adults 20 years and older, 9.2% have diagnosed diabetes (DD), 3.1% have undiagnosed diabetes (UD), and 36% have prediabetes (PD), a major precursor for Read More >

Posted on by Ramal Moonesinghe, Office of Minority Health and Health Equity; Gloria L. A. Beckles, Division of Diabetes Translation, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; Tiebin Liu, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities; Muin J. Khoury, MD, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics, public health
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Happy Thanksgiving 2017: Take time to collect, share, and act on your family health history, it may save your life!

Happy Thanksgiving 2017 with an image of DNA and pumpkins and leaves

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that we have an almost identical message around each Thanksgiving Day. Collect, share, and act on your family health history! It seems every year we emphasize a slightly different version of this message. In 2016, we highlighted the emergence of new tools that can help consumers and Read More >

Posted on by Muin J Khoury, Director, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics

Trends and Factors Affecting Utilization of BRCA Testing in the United States: The Need for Improved Surveillance

hands holding a pink ribbon with the US map in the background

This blog post is a summary of two recent CDC papers on the trends in utilization of BRCA testing in the United States, and metropolitan-nonmetropolitan areas differences in testing. Women with pathogenic BRCA mutations have an estimated 45–65% risk of breast cancer and a 17–39% risk of ovarian cancer by age 70, as compared with Read More >

Posted on by Katherine Kolor, Zhuo Chen, and Muin J. Khoury, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories breast cancer, family history, genomics, screening
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Happy Thanksgiving: Collect & Act on Your Family Health History

a multigenerational family eating a Thanksgiving meal with DNA

As you celebrate Thanksgiving with your family this November, remember that this special day is also National Family Health History Day. Family health history is important to your health and can help you detect unique disease risks and manage them before becoming sick, or find the right diagnosis and treatments when you have a certain Read More >

Posted on by Bob Wildin MD, Guest Blogger, Genomic Healthcare Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute and Muin J. Khoury MD, PhD, Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics, public health, screening
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National Family History Day 2015: Thinking globally and acting locally

Multi Generation Family Celebrating Thanksgiving

Though you probably will not find greeting cards in stores celebrating this fact, Thanksgiving has been known as National Family History Day in the U.S. since 2004.  The Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and many federal, state and private partners have marked each year with events and announcements promoting the collection and use of family Read More >

Posted on by W. Gregory Feero, MD, PhD, Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine ResidencyLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics, public health
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Family health history is a non-modifiable risk factor—or is it?

a family biking

“I met three different women who had been tested [genetic testing for mutations in the BReast CAncer susceptibility (BRCA) genes] early on, in 1996, when the BRCA test first came out. They told me their family history story of mothers, aunts, uncles, and a dad who suffered from breast or ovarian or related cancers, and Read More >

Posted on by Ridgely Fisk Green,Office of Public Health Genomics, Centers For Disease Control and PreventionLeave a comment
Categories family history, genomics
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Suicide, Family History, and Genomics

Robin Williams speaks to troups

We must continue to search for new methods to effectively address the tremendous problem of suicide. Despite recent interest, genomics does not provide the solution today, but there is a lot that we can do now using an established public health approach to prevention.   Millions were shocked by the news that comedian Robin Williams Read More >

Posted on by Scott Bowen, OPHG and Brad Bartholow with National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC StaffLeave a comment
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