American International Journal of Social Science

Does It Run in the Family? Toolkit: Improving Well-Educated Elders Ability to Facilitate Conversations about Family Health History
Penelope J. Moore, William Gratzer, Caroline Lieber, Vaughn Edelson, James O’Leary, Sharon F. Terry, Marita Grudzen, Nancy Hikoyeda

Abstract
Therole of elders imparting family health history (FHH) information to younger generations has not been well established in the literature, and even less attention has been given to their interaction with various FHH tools that can potentially assist them in collecting and organizing such information. This study sought to address this gap by assessing the impact of the customizable Does it Run in the Family? toolkit on elders’ ability to facilitate conversations about FHH and share the information with health care providers. The overall findings suggest that well-educated, relatively affluent elders, when provided the opportunity to be educated in the use of the toolkit, were willing to embrace and use it to acquire FHH information that could possibly influence health care decisions.

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