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Family History as a Tool for Public
Health and
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Background: Whereas,
targeting the general population with prevention efforts such as earlier
or more frequent Certainly,
one could argue that current public health approaches, which promote
healthy lifestyles and target the general
population-at-large have not been entirely successful. Recent studies
reveal only 25% of adults engage in recommended physical activity
levels. If people could be
convinced on a more personal level of their need to improve their health
based on a family history of chronic disease (and almost all of us have
some family history of disease), might they be more likely to engage in
healthy behaviors? Evaluation
of family history: Before family
history can be embraced as a public health screening strategy, the
accuracy and reliability of the family history tools used to stratify
disease risk should be assessed, and the effectiveness of the risk
stratification on early detection and prevention efforts should be
determined. The four components of an assessment would include analytic
validity; clinical validity; clinical utility; and ethical, legal, and
social issues that influence both validity and utility. Analytic
validity addresses how accurately and reliably the tool identifies
disease among a person’s relatives. The key elements of
analytic validity include sensitivity, which is a measure
of how well the family history tool identifies relatives who have the disease, and specificity, which is a measure of how well
the tool identifies relatives who do not have the disease. Clinical
utility is an assessment of the
impact and usefulness of the family history tool for individuals,
families, and society. Given a tool that has reasonable analytic and
clinical validity, would the classification of individuals into risk
groups improve the effectiveness of available early detection methods
and interventions? Purpose
of the workshop: The purpose of
this workshop is twofold: (1) to discuss the concept of family history
as a public health tool for risk stratification leading to improved
disease prevention and (2) to begin developing a research agenda to
evaluate the feasibility, validity, and utility of this approach. A
major component of the research would be to evaluate simple tools for
collecting family health history that can be used in both public health
and preventive medicine settings. Goals: Specific goals of this workshop include the following:
Research
priorities
for
evaluating
family
history
in
the
prevention
of
common
chronic
diseases
Family
history
assessment:
Strategies
for
prevention
of
cardiovascular
disease
Using
decision
analytic
methods
to
assess
the
utility
of
family
history
tools |
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Last Updated
August 17, 2004
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