Make Holiday Time For Health Chat

FARMINGTON — Thanksgiving and the holidays provide great opportunities to catch up on the lives of family members. It also presents an ideal opportunity to have a conversation about family health and well being.

In 2004, the US Surgeon General declared National Family History Day would be recognized annually on Thanksgiving. But any holiday visit is a good time to talk about health.

To help organize this important information, the US Department of Health and Human Services offers a free web-based tool called My Family Health Portrait, which helps create a drawing of a family tree and a family health history chart. The chart and the drawing can be printed and shared with family members and health care professionals.

The link to this tool is http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory.

Additionally, individuals can create a written record of medications, including dosage and frequency, as well as information on allergies, physicians, and pharmacists. The UConn Health Center offers personal pocket medication cards for this purpose available for download at health.uchc.edu/medicard, and by request by calling 800-535-6232.