Press Release - Sep 29, 2006
BWH Extends the U. S. Surgeon General’s “My Family Health Portrait” to Chinese-Speaking Employees and Individuals Worldwide
Boston, MA – Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has launched a Chinese version of the U.S. Surgeon General’s “My Family Health Portrait” on its website to assist its diverse workforce of 12,000 and support individuals worldwide who are interested in organizing their family’s health history. The BWH Family History Project, funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Education and Community Involvement Branch, now has its tool publicly available on the hospital’s website in Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, French, Spanish and English.
“We are giving our employees the opportunity to uncover their family’s health history, and share this information with their family and doctors,” said Michael Murray, MD, director of the BWH Family History Project and clinical chief of the hospital’s Genetics Division. “In doing this, we hope to create an online resource for people around the world.”
The National Human Genome Research Institute selected BWH in the fall of 2005 as the first urban academic medical center to pilot this tool. The BWH Family History Project developed as a voluntary and confidential service open to hospital employees. Since November, the hospital has been collecting survey data from participating employees to better understand how people use their health history and how this tool can be improved.
“This fall we plan to work with patients to incorporate their family’s comprehensive health history into their electronic medical records,” said Murray, who is also an instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Medical experts believe that a thorough family health history can be used to improve physician decision-making and subsequent patient care.
“For instance, if three of your family members have had breast cancer and you’ve added this information to your record, then your doctor might suggest an alternative screening strategy to reduce your risk of developing this disease,” said Murray.
For more information about The BWH Family History Project, or to access the web-based tool in English or Spanish, visit the hospital’s website or click here. To download a PDF of the tool in other languages including Chinese, click the links below:
Chinese
Polish
Portuguese
French
For more information, contact BWH Media Relations at (617) 534-1600 or BWHMediaRelations@partners.org.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a 747-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine and surgery. The BWH medical preeminence dates back to 1832 and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, dedication to educating and training health care professionals, and strength in biomedical research. With $370M in funding and more than 500 research scientists, BWH is an acclaimed leader in clinical, basic and epidemiological investigation - including the landmark Nurses Health Study, Physicians Health Studies, and the Women's Health Initiative. For more information about BWH, please visit: www.brighamandwomens.org.
|