Your Family Health Portrait

In 2004, the Surgeon General launched a national initiative to encourage all American families to learn more about their family health histories.

Knowing your family’s medical history can save your life!

With a copy of your family health history, you and a health care professional can individualize your care to prevent and screen for conditions for which you may be at higher risk.

Find the Family Health Portrait form at:

http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/downloads/MyFamilyHealthPortrait--English.pdf

Knowing your family health history is important for knowing one’s risk factors for chronic diseases such as: heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. It is also important for knowing if one is at risk for a rare disease like sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis. Once you know your family history you are empowered to take steps to change these risks.

The Surgeon General’s initiative to help document family histories is found at:

https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/fhh-web/home.action

Once you fill in your family’s health information, you can save it and update it later. If you are visiting your doctor, you can print it out and save time in the waiting room and have a ready reference in the future.

Interesting fact: The Surgeon General has declared Thanksgiving to be Family Health History Day so people can feel comfortable asking these important questions.

For additional information, go to:

MedlinePlus: Family History

www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/familyhistory.html

Family Health History from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

www.cdc.gov/genomics/famhistory/index.htm

--Submitted by Alison Gehred

NLM Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC)

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides health information during times of disaster.

The Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) has been created to aid the nation’s disaster management efforts. DIMRC is tasked with the effective collection, organization, and dissemination of health information for natural, accidental, or deliberate disasters.


See pages devoted to information about recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.


Also available from this site - "Earthquakes - Resources for Response and Recovery" links to background information on earthquakes and subsequent health issues, such as traumatic injuries, guidelines for responders, stress and coping, and sanitation issues.

MedlinePlus Goes Mobile

Earlier this year, the National Library of Medicine launched the long-awaited mobile version of MedlinePlus.  It includes many of your favorite MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en español pages in a display that is optimized for mobile devices.

Mobile MedlinePlus includes:

• Topic summaries – “snackable” pieces of information, you can access and digest quickly
•  News – the latest in treatment, medical research and healthy living tips
•  Images – visual appeal is important
•  Encyclopedia articles & drug information – heavily-used content
   

Mobile MedlinePlus does NOT include:

• External links – these pages are not optimized for mobile; they are “regular” Web pages
• Interactive tutorials – Flash doesn’t work on many mobile devices
• Some licensed content – we’ll work on adding in the future

See more at:
http://m.medlineplus.gov/
http://m.medlineplus.gov/spanish/

Our Health County-By-County

Report ranks U.S. counties by health care


U.S. researchers have ranked health care for almost every county in the U.S. for the first time in a report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin. Healthier counties tend to be urban and suburban, while 84% of the 50 least-healthy counties are rural, the data showed. USA TODAY (2/17)

Video: Learn more about the County Health Rankings, and how Juneau County, Wisconsin, is using the data to improve its overall health.

http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/


http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/county-rankings/26530

This is Public Health Video

Catchy 3-minute video which points to the many facets of public health. 

"This video was created for the THIS IS PUBLIC HEALTH campaign for the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH). The campaign consists of 40,000 stickers, 17 schools and a simple microsite that combines a Flickr group with Google Maps."  Check it out at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpu42LmLo4U

Check out the This is Public Health Toolkit also from ASPH.

BadgerLink: Online Information for Wisconsin

BadgerLink is a collection of online resources, many of them full text and covering a broad range of topics and disciplines, available to Wisconsin residents through their Internet services providers (ISP).


The “Health” category offers 6 options:

• Alt HealthWatch
• Consumer Health Complete - EBSCOhost
• Health Source - Consumer Edition
• Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition  
• Lexi-PALS Drug Guide
• MEDLINE

BadgerLink is a project of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Division for Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning. Its goal is to provide access to quality online information resources for Wisconsin residents. Users can search approximately 20,000 full-text magazines, journals, newspapers, reference materials and other specialized information sources. Included are over 8,000 full text magazines and journals, over 1,500 newspapers and newswires, and approximately 6,800 full text books.

Explore at:  http://www.badgerlink.net/