I need help with an assignment writing a paper on the health of three generations of my family.

As an educator, I am not personally acquainted with either you or your family and thus cannot supply any details about your own health or that of your family members. Thus this answer will focus on helping you do the research necessary for your paper.

One of the major difficulties involved with this sort of study is that you need to think about the reliability of your sources. There are three major issues to consider for each source of information:

1. Access to information: A person obviously has full access to their own experiences. Doctors, relatives and acquaintances will have less detailed information available. Written records will cover certain information but are far from complete (medical records are unlikely to include descriptions of mosquito bites or minor colds or scrapes and bruises one gets as a kid playing -- and many records only cover limited periods of people's lives)


2. Motivation to lie: People are often embarrassed by certain details of their health. For example, your grandparents would probably not want to discuss having STDs with you. Many people might lie about their weight or pretend to having better health habits than they actually do.


3. Understanding of subject matter: People who do not have medical training might not understand diagnoses or be able to describe conditions accurately. 

To get the best understanding of your own health and that of your family, therefore, you should attempt to combine materials from several different sources. You should, of course, ask permission before doing this and respect your relatives' desire for privacy. 

First, you might use personal observation. You could look through refrigerators and observe people's meals to report on diet. You could go for a walk or run and see how much distance people can cover comfortably. Someone who can go on a 20-mile training run is obviously in better aerobic condition than a person who struggles to walk a mile. You could also look in medicine cabinets to see what medications people are taking. 

Next, you should interview all living family members about their own health and the health of their relatives. While any one person's memory may be incomplete or unreliable, collating the accounts of several people may provide a more complete picture.

Finally, you should ask to see copies of medical records, including medical bills, prescriptions, doctors' records, and insurance records if your relatives maintain these.