How to Create a Medical Family Health Tree
- 1). There are now many tools available on the Internet to aid in compiling a family medical history. It should take less than 30 minutes to complete a 3 generational tree. One popular one is called "My Family Health Portrait", which is provided by the U.S. Surgeon General's website (see the link in the Resource section below). This site is free and offers customized formatting. Another resource you may check is your own heathcare provider. Many may provide a similar tool.
- 2). Collect the medical information yourself by interviewing your close relatives. This medical snapshot will show which diseases occur most often. You should be able to see patterns of how they appear. A pattern may be gender specific or age related. Whether it skips generations on includes all. This information will help your physician(s) understand more about your medical history.
- 3). Once you have completed the medical history, look for both preventable and hereditary diseases. There may be hope for preventing some diseases in future generations.
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Example of a blank family tree
Once you have created this medical family tree it will have to be updated and maintained from time to time, adding children and / or grandchildren and noting any deaths which may occur.
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