With health officials now urging Americans to dig into their family health history, experts advise taking advantage of free Internet tools - and upcoming holiday gatherings - to get started on the project.

Family history of disease is an important part of assessing one’s own health risks. While few medical disorders are strictly the result of a faulty inherited gene, common diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some cancers have a familial component.

Knowing that some relatives suffered heart disease at a relatively young age, for instance, may encourage a person to quit smoking or eat more healthfully, or prompt their doctors to keep a close eye on their cholesterol or blood pressure levels. But first, that family history must be collected.

A “good first step” is to download one of the simple forms on family medical history that are available online, according to Christina Zaleski, a genetic counselor at Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin - which last week launched its own downloadable form on its Web site, http://www.marshfieldclinic.org

That coincided with an announcement from the U.S. Surgeon General urging Americans to learn as much as they could about the prevalence of cancer, heart disease and other ills in their families. The Department of Health and Human Services also unveiled a new, free computer program designed to organize family health information into a printout that can be taken on a visit to the doctor.

That tool is available for download at http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/

Another cyberspace source is the Web site of the National Society of Genetics Counselors - http://www.nsgc.org-which has instructions on how to assemble a medical “family tree.”

These online aids can give users an idea of what health information to gather from relatives, as well as a place to document it, according to Zaleski.

She advised going back as far as possible into the generations to uncover health information, but getting details on three generations is a good goal. People should start with themselves, any children, and their parents and siblings, then move on to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

For relatives who are no longer living, Zaleski said, try to get information from the family member who was closest to them in life.

It’s important to not only record the diseases diagnosed in one’s family, but also the ages at which the conditions occurred, Zaleski said. For instance, a case of heart disease at age 40 is a bigger red flag than one diagnosed at age 70.

Another point to remember is that just because a disease has struck one or more family members, does not mean you are “doomed” to have it, Zaleski noted.

“Most things are not just genetics alone or environment alone, but a combination of the two,” she said.

Because of the heavy influence of environment, a family health history should also include, whenever possible, information on whether a relative smoked, had on-the-job exposures to chemicals, a poor diet or other risk factors for disease.

And don’t forget to document the bright spots as well, Zaleski said. “If you know your great-grandpa lived to be 95, that’s important too.”

Since some people might feel awkward asking relatives about their health and that of the family’s older generations, Zaleski recommended focusing on the fact that talking with family and hearing stories about older relatives can be “fun.”

Holiday gatherings can be a good place to start the discussion, according to Zaleski, since they are relatively low-stress. Often, she said, people think about family medical history only when a relative is seriously ill, and waiting for a time of “crisis” to collect such information can make the process harder.