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Identify your disease risk |
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ST. LOUIS—With just a few clicks at a new web site, people can quickly find out their risks for a variety of diseases, including 12 cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Your Disease Risk, hosted by the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine, also provides advice on how to reduce these risks.
"If we can spread the word about prevention strategies, people can start early in life to prevent disease later,” says Dr. Graham Colditz, associate director of Prevention and Control at Siteman. “We know that it can be hard to decide among all the health claims in the media, and we established this site to make it easy for people to find reliable recommendations for better health and to identify strategies that are best for them.”
By answering a few questions about eating habits, exercise, and lifestyle in any of a series of questionnaires, users will quickly receive a personalized risk profile, as well as links to other web resources about those diseases. Visitors can choose to investigate just one disease, but answers in one questionnaire are applied to all of the questionnaires to keep users from having to repeat their answers.
"We have a system of review that looks at published scientific research on disease risk and makes additions or changes when significant new data become available," Colditz says. "As we go forward, the prevention and control team at the Siteman Cancer Center will continue to ensure the accuracy and relevancy of the site."
The group hopes to offer a Spanish language version of the site shortly.
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