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enlighten the public on matters which vitally concern them,
to choose our material with loving care, to establish and
review from time to time a programme of priorities. This
can be done in several ways.
We should make quite certain that the services
available to the public are fully known and understood.
We should draw attention to factors which have topical
interest and are of immediate significance, e.g. measles and
influenza outbreaks, the existence of food poisoning or
dysentery. We should endeavour by every means available to
stress the fundamental principles upon which a healthy individual
and community are based. Lastly, we should try to
concentrate on those age groups and sections of the communitv
which are most in need of education in its widest sense,
without making the cardinal mistake of always preaching to
the converted and so neglecting those groups which are most
difficult to reach.
Our health education programme in Friern Barnet is,
I venture.to suggest, reasonably comprehensive,. Apart from
the work carried out from day to day by our Sanitary Inspector?
and so far as the County Council is concerned, by the Health
Visitors both in the Clinic and in the home, the Council will
be aware that numerous talks and health film shows are giver
during the year; while articles appear from time to time in
the local press. We are extending our work in the schools,
a field of paramount importance; while we undertake special
campaigns from time to time designed to focus attention on
important aspects of health and the prevention of disease.
It must be realised that the results of our efforts
are not readily discernible. We cannot say that, for a
certain expenditure, we can guarantee certain results. Nor,
although we believe this to be the case, can we say that our
expenditure on health education has saved the community a
given sum of money. What we can and do claim most emphatically
is that a progressive policy of health education will be
followed, either immediately or over the years, by results
which have quite incalculable value. If these results are
sometimes intangible, at least for a period, their value is
not thereby diminished. When one remembers the infinitesimal
sums being spent on health education as compared with other
branches of local government expenditure, and when one
realises that health education lies at the very root of a
healthy community, the arguments in its favour are surely
undeniable.
It must also be clear that Friern Barnet is in many
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