I recently got a letter in the mail from my insurance company inviting me to find out how healthy I am. It was the kind of mail that I normally would toss right into recycling until I realized it might make a good blog post. I decided to read further.

The insurance company has set up new online profile for its carriers where we can take a free, confidential survey that is supposed to identify risky or life threatening behaviors related to an individual’s lifestyle or medical history. As it turns out, I just requested from each of the women in my family their knowledge of our family’s medical history because I realized every time I go to the doctor (which is extremely rare) I have to fill out the medical history portion of some form and I am not well educated on what has or hasn’t happened in my family. If you’re not sure if there is a history of cancer or diabetes or high blood pressure or a host of others in your family, start asking.

Knowing I finally have some medical background on my family, which is thankfully pretty clean, I decided to take the survey and find out its analysis of my health. The program focuses on risk factors that you can control or change to improve your health and the insurance company makes it clear that the assessment is just one tool for evaluating an individual’s current health status and risk factors. Continue reading →