Health visiting: the spearhead of the social services.

Abstract

more than facilities for treating the sick. To secure positive health, we must prevent disease. In short, the emphasis should be on preventive medicine, not curative. The most important factor in prevention of disease is health education. This can be done and is being done through various channels. Health education in our training colleges and schools is improving although not yet adequate. I should like to pay a special tribute to what I feel nursery schools have done for the education of the parents of the children who attend them. More attention is being paid to health matters in our factories. The press, radio and television can, and do, help in health education and propaganda. To preach, however, is one thing; to practise, quite another. Our greatest problem to-day is not the need for further research into the cause of ill-health and disease, important although that is. Our greatest problem is to secure the application of what