Your Fall Health Checklist: 5 Things to Handle Before the Year Ends
Updated: Sep 23
A checklist to tackle the appointments, refills and decisions that are easiest to push to next week. These are the top 5 health items I recommend my patients cross off this fall, before the end of the year.
By Lindsey Beauboeuf, DO
Board-Certified Family Medicine Physician
Updated September 2026 · 6 min read
Every year around this time, I feel like September turns into January in about five minutes.
School is back. Work picks up. The holidays start showing up on the calendar, and underneath all of it are the appointments you meant to make, the refill you still need and the mammogram reminder that has been sitting in your portal for weeks. But believe it or not, you can still coast to the holidays if you tackle your health checklist in the fall.
1. Get your house ready for sick season.
Nobody wants to spend Thanksgiving sick or watch the same virus work its way through the whole house for three weeks.
Start with vaccines. I recommend an annual flu vaccine for most of my patients, and we talk through any other vaccines based on age, health history, pregnancy and individual risk.
If fall allergies hit you every year, restock now. Ragweed season overlaps with the start of cold and flu season, and the first few days of congestion and coughing can be hard to sort out.
Then do a quick sick-day check. At my house that means a thermometer that works, fever and pain medicine that isn't expired, saline spray, tissues and whatever inhalers or allergy medicines we use. I also keep honey, citrus, a clean humidifier and ingredients for an easy soup around. Nothing fancy. I just don't want to realize at 10 p.m. that everybody feels terrible and we somehow own three empty medicine boxes and no working thermometer.
While you're in the medicine cabinet, check refills and expiration dates on anything you depend on, like inhalers, EpiPens or migraine medicine, including whatever your child keeps at school. If a medication usually needs a prior authorization, request the refill two or three weeks early. Prior authorization problems have a way of surfacing the day before you leave town.
2. Figure out what screenings you’re overdue for.
If there's a mammogram, Pap smear or colon cancer screening you've been meaning to schedule, make the appointment this week.
Some of these may come up sooner than you think. For average-risk adults, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends mammograms beginning at age 40 and colorectal cancer screening beginning at 45.
Family history can change when screening should start too, which is one reason the standard age on a checklist doesn't tell the whole story. Your personal history matters. So do previous results. And sometimes a test someone asks me for really isn't going to add much for their situation, and I'd rather have that conversation before they spend the time and money.
If you're not sure what you're due for, check your patient portal or ask your primary care doctor. You shouldn't have to memorize the guidelines yourself.
For my MOZAÏK members, we review this together. I would much rather look at the whole picture with you and decide what you actually need than have you ordering random tests because somebody on Instagram told you to.
3. Know your blood pressure trend.
Blood pressure can climb for years before you feel anything. Black adults in the U.S. have some of the highest rates of high blood pressure in the world, and it tends to develop earlier.
A single reading tells me less than the pattern. If your blood pressure has crept up a few points each year, that's worth a conversation even if the individual readings haven't looked particularly alarming. And if you got a high reading at urgent care, the pharmacy or a work health fair, don't automatically write it off as nerves or a rushed measurement.
If your blood pressure has been elevated, borderline or inconsistent in the office, a good home cuff can be incredibly useful. Choose a validated upper-arm cuff, sit quietly for a few minutes before checking and keep track of your readings for a week or two. That gives your doctor much more to work with than one number taken right after you rushed in from the parking lot.
The same goes for your other numbers. If your A1C changed, I want to know what happened with your sleep, stress and medications during that stretch. If you lost ten pounds and a good share of it was muscle, that changes the plan too.
I like labs. I order them all the time. Before I order one, I want to know what question it's going to answer.
4. Use this year's benefits and rethink how your care fits together.
If you have an FSA, check your balance and your plan's rules now. Depending on your plan, you may have a carryover or grace period, or you may lose unused funds at the end of the plan year.
If you've already met your deductible or you're close, look at the care you've been meaning to schedule. A follow-up, test or procedure your doctor has already recommended may cost you less before your plan resets. Open enrollment is also a good time to look at how your primary care and your coverage for larger medical expenses fit together.
A MOZAÏK membership covers your primary care, including the visits and services included in your membership and the ongoing relationship in between. You still need to think separately about the larger and less predictable parts of healthcare, including hospital stays, surgery, emergency care and specialty treatment.
Some people use traditional health insurance for that. Others look at health sharing arrangements or supplemental hospital and accident plans. Those options work very differently and don't necessarily provide the same coverage or consumer protections, so look closely at what is covered, what isn't and what you would be responsible for paying if something major happened.
The goal is to understand what you're actually buying before you need it.
5. Make sure you have a primary care doctor you can actually reach.
In a 2026 national survey, 61% of millennials said they delay or skip routine checkups and screenings.
A lot of healthcare then becomes reactive. Something comes up, you go to urgent care, that one issue gets treated and everyone moves on. Screenings, a slowly rising blood pressure and the symptom you've had for six months are easier to deal with when someone is following you over time. Someone has to order the mammogram, notice that your blood pressure has gone up three years in a row and remember the exhaustion you mentioned last spring.
If you don't have that doctor, fall is a good time to find one before appointment calendars get even fuller toward the end of the year.
Before your next visit, write down the two or three things you most want to talk about.
Once you're sitting in the exam room, it's surprisingly easy to forget the thing that has been bothering you for months. And if something is new, getting worse or worrying you, don't save it for your year-end list. Unexplained weight loss, chest pain, shortness of breath, unusual bleeding or another significant new symptom deserves a call to your doctor sooner.
Before the year gets away from you
You don’t need a fall health overhaul. You don’t need to suddenly become the person who meal preps every Sunday, works out at 5 AM and has every preventive screening perfectly scheduled.
Just look at the list and ask yourself: What have I been meaning to take care of? Start there.
And if you’ve been putting things off because you don’t have a primary care doctor who has the time to sit down, look at the whole picture and help you make a plan, that’s exactly what we do at MOZAÏK.
References:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Adult Immunization Schedule
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Breast Cancer Screening Recommendation
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Colorectal Cancer Screening Recommendation
American Heart Association: High Blood Pressure in Black Adults and Home Blood Pressure Monitoring
Internal Revenue Service: Flexible Spending Account guidance
HealthCare.gov: Understanding health plan costs and coverage
This article is for general educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized medical advice. Screening, vaccination, testing and treatment recommendations should be based on your personal health history and discussed with your healthcare professional.
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