March 29, 2005 -- Health is a family affair and nongenetic family influences
March 29, 2005 -- Health is a family affair and nongenetic family influences have a big impact on both individual and public health, new research shows.
A new study shows that across the U.S. population, family and community have an effect on individual health status. Researchers show that family influences accounted for as much as a quarter of the variation on individual health.
"We don't know for sure, but we hypothesize that this large influence is because these people have been together for a long time," study researcher Robert L. Ferrer, MD, MPH, tells WebMD. "It stands to reason that if there is a family effect on health the people who have been together the longest would be the most vulnerable."
Health policy and interventions should place more emphasis on the family's role in health, say the researchers.
Nongenetic Influences Measured
Ferrer and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center analyzed data from a national community tracking study involving 35,000 people, mostly husbands and wives.
"This is one of the first studies to look at mostly nongenetic family influences on health at a population level," Ferrer says.
The researchers concluded that anywhere from 4.5% to 26% of the variation in individual health among the study participants was linked to family influence.
The effect of family relationships was greatest among older married couples whose children no longer lived with them.
Among younger couples with children still living at home, such influences accounted for 13% of the individual variance in health.
The findings are published in the March/April issue of the journal Annals of Family Medicine.
Husbands and wives made up 87% of the people included in the analysis. The researchers are not the first to find that
In a study reported in 2002, investigators from Brigham Young University reported that the health of a spouse was as strong a predictor of an individual's physical well-being as was education level and economic status.
"Married couples have a lot of the same characteristics, which can certainly contribute to health," Ferrer says. "If one smokes the other may smoke, and they tend to eat the same way."
Married couples share the same health risks and benefits related to physical environment and they share important social characteristics such as economic level and health insurance status. They also tend to share similar views about health and medicine.
Ferrer says the findings, while preliminary, may have implications for health care providers and policymakers.
"When someone in a family is sick that may be a signal that others in the family are at risk," he says. "It may be valuable to think about creative ways to intervene at the family level instead of just the personal level."
Understanding the determinants of illness and health have important implications to informed policy on health interventions, says the researchers.
In an editorial accompanying the study, James House, PhD, and Ana Diez Roux, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan wrote that the study illustrates the importance of understanding family as well as broader societal influences when treating individual patients.
They noted that these influences may be more important to individual well-being than genetic factors and other widely accepted measures of risk.
"In the end, we must understand the interactions and relationships among all of these levels," they wrote.
