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Health Education
During the year the whole field of Health Education in the
Borough was reviewed. The work falls into three sections:
(1) Contacts with the general public by means of posters, talks,
exhibitions, etc. (2) Contact with Ante-natal mothers and mothers
of young children via Health Visitors and Clinics. (3) Contacts
with schoolchildren, mainly by individual Health Visitors,
members of the staff of the Health Education section, and some
schoolteachers who are interested in the subject.
The conclusions arising from this review were that only a
very small section of the general public could be reached effectively
on a local basis, and that possibly only large scale Health
Education publicity on a national basis involving television,
radio, and press coverage, has the power to influence the health
habits of a significant proportion of the general public.
The Health Education of mothers attending the clinic and
seen by the Health Visitors has proved itself over the years in
increasing awareness on the part of the mothers for proper
standards of hygiene and child care. This section of Health
Education presents few problems as new mothers are anxious to
learn and the Health Visitors well qualified give them all the
information they seek.
With schoolchildren there is both the wish and the will to
learn in nearly every instance. Once the child starts school
there appears to be a tendency for the majority of children to
accept the teaching in schools, whether it be from the schoolteachers
or from Medical Officers, Dentists, Health Visitors,
etc. in preference to what they are taught at home.
In the long term, therefore, it appears that the greatest
possibility of Health Education being really effective is to
increase the teaching of this subject in schools. With the size
of the school population it is obviously impossible for the Health
Education and Health Visiting staff to reach more than a small
proportion of the school population during the course of the year.
It was decided, therefore, to endeavour to increase the interest
of the teaching staff with a view to their including health education
subjects in with general teaching — not necessarily as a
separate subject, but as an item which can be introduced as and
when opportunity occurs during normal lessons.
Without making any radical changes, a start was made in
this direction by advising all headteachers that various health
education aids such as films, film slides, etc. could be borrowed
from the Health Education section, and as a result in the second
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