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Another important feature of our campaign was the production
of the third edition of the Public Health Services Handbook, an
extremely useful brochure produced on behalf of the Council by
Messrs. Ed. J. Burrows & Co., Ltd. 750 copies of the Handbook
were issued throughout the Borough. A special leaflet setting out
the facilities available through the School Health Service was also
prepared and distributed to all schoolchildren.
Forty local organisations were approached during the summer
of 1946 and invited to accept a health film show as part of their
winter programme. The response was gratifying, and although
audiences were not always large, they were none the less appreciative.
Newer and more effective sound films are now available, and it is
hoped that the response during the coming year to a similar
invitation will be even better. Our film projector, purchased in
1938, has now been used on more than 1,000 occasions and is due
for overhaul. This is being arranged.
It is hoped that our 1947 Health Education programme will
be extended by the inclusion of several get-together discussions
with Parent-Teacher Associations. These latter provide a particularly
useful means of ventilating topics of practical interest
and importance.
The time has passed when health education can be considered
the Cinderella of the Public Health services, a toy to be played with
to modified advantage at infrequent intervals. We cannot afford
these days to neglect any means of increasing human knowledge,
especially when that knowledge intimately concerns the well-being
of the individual and the community as a whole. It so happens
that health education is not a costly business; the expenditure is
extremely low when compared with any other branch of the Public
Health Service. But that is relatively unimportant. It is the
results which really count. Here we can truthfully say that the
potential dividends are enormous, the benefits literally incalculable.
We can justly claim to have been pioneers in at ieast one field
of health education, that of the sound-film projector; if we are
allowed to continue our present work, Southgate will undoubtedly
reap substantial benefit.
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