Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.family history

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    The Use of Family Health Histories to Address Health Disparities in an African American Community
    (2007) Vogel, Kristen J.; Murthy, Vinaya S.; Dudley, Beth; Grubs, Robin E.; Gettig, Elizabeth; Ford, Angela; Thomas, Stephen B.
    African Americans continue to suffer from health disparities. The Center for Minority Health (CMH) within the University of Pittsburgh has the mission to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. CMH has designed and implemented the Family Health History (FHH) Initiative. The FHH Initiative places geneticcounseling graduate students in the African American community to provide risk assessments and emphasize the importance of family history as it pertains to disease prevention. The FHH Initiative also allows participants to enroll into the Minority Research Recruitment Database (MRRD). This enables CMH to alert individuals to available research participation opportunities. In the first year of this program, 225 African Americans completed their family health histories. More than 60% of individuals enrolled in the MRRD. The authors report their initial successes and challenges of an initiative that incorporates awareness of family history information, proper screening guidelines, behavior modification recommendations, and support for participation in clinical research.
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    Family history of type 2 diabetes: A population-based screening tool for prevention?
    (2006) Hariri, Susan; Yoon, Paula W.; Qureshi, Nadeem; Valdez, Rodolfo; Scheuner, Maren T.; Khoury, Muin J.
    Purpose: To evaluate the use of self-reported family medical history as a potential screening tool to identify people at-risk for diabetes. Methods: The HealthStyles 2004 mail survey comprises 4345 US adults who completed a questionnaire to ascertain personal and family history of diabetes, perceived risk of diabetes, and practice of risk-reducing behaviors. Using number and type of affected relatives, respondents were ranked into three familial risk levels. Adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were obtained to evaluate associations between familial risk and prevalent diabetes, perceived risk of disease, and risk-reducing behaviors. Validity of family history as a screening tool was examined by calculating sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values. Results: Compared to those of average risk, people with moderate and high familial risk of diabetes were more likely to report a diagnosis of diabetes (AOR: 3.6, 95% CI: 2.8, 4.7; OR: 7.6, 95% CI: 5.9, 9.8, respectively), a higher perceived risk of diabetes (AOR: 4.6, 95% CI: 3.7, 5.7; OR: 8.5, 95% CI: 6.6, 17.7, respectively), and making lifestyle changes to prevent diabetes (AOR: 2.2, 95% CI: 1.8, 2.7; OR: 4.5, 95% CI: 3.6, 5.6, respectively). A positive familial risk of diabetes identified 73% of all respondents with diabetes and correctly predicted prevalent diabetes in 21.5% of respondents. Conclusion: Family history of diabetes is not only a risk factor for the disease but is also positively associated with risk awareness and risk-reducing behaviors. It may provide a useful screening tool for detection and prevention of diabetes.
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    Family History Assessment: Strategies for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
    (2003) Hunt, Steven C; Gwinn, Marta; Adams, Ted D
    Family history assessment can be used to combine population-wide health promotion and risk-reduction efforts with a high-risk, targeted approach to help reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Family history is an independent predictor of CVD, and the upper portion of the family history distribution explains a larger fraction of CVD in the population than can be explained by extreme values of other risk factors (e.g., blood pressure and cholesterol). A positive family history of disease captures the underlying complexities of gene–gene and gene–environment interactions by identifying families with combinations of risk factors, both measured and unmeasured, that lead to disease expression. Family history is a useful tool for identifying most prevalent cases of CVD and for population-wide disease-prevention efforts. A positive family history also identifies the relatively small subset of families in the population at highest risk for CVD who may benefit most from targeted screening and intensive intervention.
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    The Association Between Knowledge and Attitudes About Genetic Testing for Cancer Risk in the United States
    (2005) Rose, Abigail; Peters, Nikki; Shea, Judy A; Armstrong, Katrina
    Attitudes about genetic testing are likely to be an important determinant of uptake of predictive genetic tests among the general public. Several prior studies have suggested that positive attitudes about genetic testing may be inversely related to knowledge about genetic testing. We conducted a random-digit-dialing (RDD) telephone survey of 961 adults in the continental United States to determine the associations among knowledge of, attitudes about, and perceptions of eligibility for genetic testing for cancer risk. Knowledge about genetic testing for cancer risk was generally high, with a mean accuracy score of 72%. Attitudes about genetic testing for cancer risk were also generally positive, with 87% of respondents reporting genetic testing for cancer risk would be used to help doctors manage their health care and 85% to help scientists find cures for diseases. In contrast, 58% of respondents thought genetic testing for cancer risk would be used to prevent them from getting health insurance and 31% to allow the government to label groups as inferior. Twenty-nine percent of respondents thought they were currently eligible for testing. After adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and family cancer history, higher knowledge was correlated with more positive attitudes about testing, but not with negative attitudes or perceptions of testing eligibility. Family history was positively associated with perceptions of eligibility (OR 3.49, 95%CI 2.36–5.18), and higher levels of education were inversely associated with perceptions of eligibility (OR 0.55, 95%CI 0.32–0.94 for comparison of college or higher vs. less than high school). These results suggest that most members of the general public are knowledgeable and have positive attitudes about genetic testing for cancer risk and that greater knowledge is correlated with more positive attitudes about the benefits of testing.
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    Development of a Minority Research Recruitment Database: Assessing Factors Associated with Willingness of African Americans to Enroll
    (2005) Vogel, Kristen J
    The Center for Minority Health (CMH) within the University of Pittsburgh has the mission to eliminate racial health disparities by 2010. One community-based intervention focuses on family health histories. Family health histories, or pedigrees, have been shown to be effective tools for identifying individuals at risk for common diseases who may benefit from increased screening or other risk reduction behaviors. Genetic counseling graduate students provide individuals with information pertaining to the importance of family history information in reducing the risk of chronic disease. Students travel to various locations in the African American community where they collect individuals’ family health histories. Individuals who participate have the opportunity to enroll in the Minority Research Recruitment Database from which they can be contacted regarding research for which they may qualify. This is the Center’s effort to increase minority recruitment. This has public health relevance given that minorities are often under-represented in research and it is thought that increasing minority recruitment will aid in elimination of racial health disparities. This study was developed to characterize individuals who elected to enroll in the database and compare them to those who declined enrollment. Factors for comparison include demographics, recruitment variables, opinions regarding research, health care, personal health, and family history. Factors were assessed for 126 participants of which approximately 80% enrolled in the database and 20% declined. Analysis revealed that those more likely to participate in the database were female, without health insurance, more likely to respond to monetary incentives, more likely to talk to their physician about concerns for developing a disease, and less likely to have previously refused participation in a clinical trial. These results indicate that women are more likely than men to seek health information that pertains to their family history, incentives act as a motivation for individuals to enroll in this database, and issues of distrust may still act as a barrier to research participation for African Americans.