Background: The family history has a potentially important role in general practice for risk prediction and tailored disease prevention for several common chronic diseases.
Objective: This article discusses the potential role of the family history in general practice including current risk assessment guidelines and approaches to supporting family history taking.
Discussion: Family history reflects shared genetic and environmental risks and can be used to identify individuals at increased risk of common chronic disease who may benefit from tailored preventive management. General practitioners need to develop skills in taking a full family history, creating a pedigree and using this to determine disease risk. Future developments in this area include family history screening tools, computerised risk assessment and, in the longer term, identification of common genetic mutations that are reflected in a person's family history.