Abstract
Although family health history (FHH) collection has been recognized as an influential method for assessing a person’s risk of chronic disease, studies have shown that people who are low-income, from racial and ethnic minorities, and poorly educated are less likely to collect their FHH or share it with a medical professional. Programs to raise public awareness about the importance of FHH have conventionally targeted patients in primary care clinics or in the general community, but few efforts have been made to coordinate educational efforts across settings. This paper describes a project by the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s Genomics Office to disseminate training materials about FHH as broadly as possible, by engaging partners in multiple settings: a local health department, a community health center, and two advocacy organizations that serve minority and immigrant populations. We used a mixed methods program evaluation to examine the efficacy of the FHH program and to assess barriers in integrating it into the groups’ regular programming. Our findings highlight how a state health department can promote FHH education among underserved communities.
Highlights
Health history (FHH) collection has been recognized as a simple yet informative tool for predicting an individual’s risk of developing chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, or heart disease.It has been touted as a “tried-and-true” method for cheaply assessing a patient’s susceptibility to chronic diseases, based on an assessment of genetic, environmental, and social predictors [1]
Some of the organizations carried out their intervention as proposed, some interventions were modified, with the approval of the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CT-DPH) Genomics Office coordinator
The CT-DPH Genomics Office worked with a local health department, a community health center, and two community-based organizations that serve ethnic and immigrant minorities, to teach them about the importance of knowing one’s Family health history (FHH), sharing it with relatives and healthcare providers, and the potential of using FHH information to personalize chronic disease prevention initiatives
Summary
It has been touted as a “tried-and-true” method for cheaply assessing a patient’s susceptibility to chronic diseases, based on an assessment of genetic, environmental, and social predictors [1] It provides both patients and providers with knowledge to personalize disease prevention plans [1,2,3,4]. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status and certain racial or ethnic minorities have consistently reported lower levels of collecting FHH information and sharing it with a medical provider [5,6,7,8]. The underutilization of this risk assessment tool reflects many structural and cultural barriers. The American healthcare workforce does not reflect the diversity in the general population and many providers lack the cultural competency to communicate disease prevention and management strategies to non-white and low-income patients [9,10,11,12]
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