Heritage consistency: a predictor of health beliefs and practices.

The Heritage Assessment Tool, in combination with questions relating to health and illness beliefs and practices was helpful in helping informants remember events in their childhood and also in garnishing health and illness beliefs and practices. The richness of the data in respect to health beliefs is an untapped reservoir. The experience of this small study leaves this author to suspect that countless health beliefs and practices exist that have not been recorded. It is highly recommended that this information be gleaned as rapidly as possible as the older generation will not endure forever. When one considers the resilience of people over 70, the fact that they did survive childhood without immunization, and that they comprise a generation that has lived far longer than previous generations, one can only wonder: How?