If you want to take a more active role in improving your own and your family's health, the number one item on your to-do list should be to organize your family's health records. Here are a few reasons why this is so important:

·        Compiling a comprehensive family medical history can play a role in helping you prevent illnesses for which you are at risk. While illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, or diabetes may not always be preventable, there are important things you can do to reduce your risk and minimize their impact. Knowing that your mother has heart disease and osteoporosis will heighten your awareness in research findings about the benefits and risks of calcium, hormone replacement therapy, weight control, and exercise.

·        Charting your family's medical history, and learning your health risks, can provide the incentive to develop healthier habits that will improve the quality of life now and as aging progresses.

·        Sharing your organized information with the family's health care providers will improve communication with your health care providers. At a glance, they can see your most likely health risks, what screening tests to perform, and what advice they should give you about lifestyle improvements. While each of your health care providers keeps a record of his or her treatment of you, they don't always know what other health care providers are doing. It is useful to see what medications you are taking, what tests you have had recently, and what problems you are being treated for. You are the best source of information about all the different health care providers you have seen, and your health care providers rely on you to provide it.

·        If you are a parent, one of the best ways you can ensure good health care for your child is to keep a medical record of vaccinations, growth and development, childhood illnesses, surgeries, blood type, allergies, and medications, along with the names and addresses of health care providers who provided care. You or your child's pediatrician might not always be around to provide this important information.

·        In an emergency, you may be the one who must provide vital information about prior illnesses, injuries, medications, and allergies. At such a time, you may even be too ill or upset to be able to recall the information required. So, plan ahead and organize health records for each member of the family before an emergency.