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past and what methods are likely to be most effective in future. As the Council's evidence
was in the nature of a review of the department's activities in this field in recent years, the
substance of the statement is reproduced here, with the addition of statistics for 1961,
in place of the more usual limited annual review.
As both a local health and education authority, the Council aims to provide a comprehensive
educational programme in physical and mental health. It has been active in some
degree in the field of health education since the inception of the school health service in
1905.
What is health education—Health education may be defined as attempting to:
(a) teach some of the underlying facts that will enable people to understand something
of modern medicine and the function of their own bodies;
(b) help people to appreciate the effects of heredity and environment on the community,
their family and themselves;
(c) help people to accept responsibility and to modify their attitudes towards health,
disease and injury;
(d) explain the health services to people in terms which they can understand, so that
they are able to accept help in a rational manner.
The emphasis of health education has changed over the years and can be thought of in
three groups, inevitably mixed but still broadly separate:
Environmental hygiene—sewage disposal, safe water, etc. The education of small and
influential groups for a short time, i.e. till the service was created.
Preventive medicine—the control of communicable diseases by immunisation and
medical treatment. The need for quite large numbers of people, e.g. parents, to modify
their attitudes for long enough to allow their children or themselves to be immunised.
Positive health—the education of groups of people to modify their attitudes permanently,
e.g. to change their diet, the way of rearing children, to give up smoking, in order
to attain higher standards of physical and mental health.
Co-operation in health education—Broadly, since 5 July, 1948 the Council has left health
education on environmental hygiene to the metropolitan borough councils and has itself
concentrated on the personal health services. There is the fullest co-operation with the
metropolitan boroughs, e.g. the Council has provided stands and stewards for borough
home safety exhibitions. In addition, there is a close link with the numerous bodies which
have an interest, direct or indirect, in health education such as the Central Council for
Health Education, Borough Safety Committees, the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Accidents, the British Standards Institution, the National Association for Mental Health
and the National Marriage Guidance Council. Financial assistance given by the Council
in 1960/61 included:
Central Council for Health Education £1,925
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Training Centre) £2,400
The Council looks to the voluntary bodies as the main source of posters and pamphlets.
An executive committee to co-ordinate health education projects of common interest
was formed early in 1961 by the liaison committee of medical officers of health of London
and the Home Counties.* Its chairman and secretary are respectively chairman and
secretary of the Council's Health Education Advisory Panel; the Medical Director of the
Central Council for Health Education is also a member. Plans for a joint campaign to
publicise polio vaccination, based on a poster display at London Transport Executive and
British Railway stations in the area of the authorities, were rendered abortive by difficulties
over the availability of vaccine and it was decided to postpone the campaign indefinitely.
* Bedfordshire, Brighton, Buckinghamshire, Canterbury, Croydon, Eastbourne, East Ham, East Sussex,
Essex, Hastings, Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Middlesex, Southend, Surrey and West Ham.
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