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HEALTH EDUCATION
During the year work on the education of the general public in matters of
health and hygiene continued by means of personal communication between Public
Health Department Staff and individuals, talks to Associations illustrated by
topical film strips, poster publicity and leaflet distribution.
The main subjects on which publicity was concentrated during the year, were
influenza in the Spring,, food hygiene in the Summer and Mass Radiography publicity
prior to the visit of the Mass X-Ray Unit. Health education is in some ways
the most important work of the department and each member of the department
staff is continually educating individual members of the public with regard to
the prevention of ill-health, andhow to lead full and healthy lives. By health
education through conversation, discussions in groups, attendance at lectures,
observation, however casual, of health publicity on hoardings, in newspapers,
on the cinema, on the wireless, on television, the people are gradually coming
to accept certain fundamental rules of healthy living.
The persistent emphasis on the elementary desirability of good nutritious
food, adequate sleep, adequate but not excessive exercise. fresh air Winter and
Summer, can be seen to have had a slow penetrating quality of efficiency which
seems to be demonstrated by the findings in certain surveys of school children
in London and elsewhere, who are shown on the average to be taller and heavier
and therefore likely to have greater resistance to disease than the average of
a corresponding number of children from the same schools 20 years ago.
The automatic provision of better housing, better schools, meals and milk
in schools, no doubt have played their part in this increase in the stature of
the generations but in themselves, without a proper use of the facilities
offered and without attention to the four primary needs which have been stated,
would not have produced this result, Health education must be gradual and carefully
given in order to prevent resistance and revolt to what is, after all, an
endeavour to change very often a whole way of living.
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