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factory and satisfying home, recreational, educational and
working environment, is likely to prove the healthiest of
contagions if conveyed with good humour and becoming sensitivity.
Thus health education — the imparting of information in a
persuasive manner so as to promote mental and physical health
by providing the facts and stimulating the will to act upon them
assumes an ever-growing relevance to the daily activity of
doctors, dentists and nurses in alliance with teachers, social
workers and all the many other disciplines and groups concerned
with the welfare of the community. How fitting therefore that the
photographic supplement occupying the centre pages of the
Report depicts the new Doddington Child Health Centre, where
excellent facilities for health education are a prominent feature;
the mobile cytology unit of the Women's National Cancer Control
Campaign kindly loaned to the Council for the month of September
as an instrument of health education as well as of service in the
field; and a puppet show which has proved for both pupils and
staff at primary schools in the Borough a most popular means of
dental health education.
Within the Health Department responsibility for the development
of a continuing and comprehensive programme of health
education rests with a Principal Medical Officer (Dr. Church)
supported by the Divisional Nursing Officer (Miss Hughes) and a
Senior Administrative Assistant (Mr. Frank Smith). This trio
exercises day-to-day responsibility for the planning, coordination
and evaluation of all health education activity; for
liaison with outside organizations, head teachers in schools and
the Health Education Unit of the I.L.E.A.; and for the fostering and
supervision of the arrangements for in-service training in health
education. Fuller details will be found in the body of the Report.
A significant increase in the health education budget of the
department enabled essential equipment to be purchased or
renewed and intensive publicity campaigns to be launched in the
fields of family planning and cervical cytological screening.
Additional impetus to the health education effort locally was
given by the Council in approving the use of the mobile
cytology unit mentioned earlier and in agreeing to collaborate
with the Health Education Council in a major campaign aimed at
reducing the incidence of venereal diseases in general, and of
gonorrhoea in particular, in Wandsworth and the adjoining
Borough of Lambeth with special emphasis being placed on the
education of the younger age-groups. The outcome of this
collaborative pilot venture will be of special interest for success