The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

December, 1951 The Health Bulletin 15volunteer grabbed a hose and begandragging it toward the house. It wastoo dark to see much, but he couldsmell plenty of smoke. "Quick," heshouted, "turn on the water".One of the old-timers among thevolunteers called back, "Easy therefella, let the fire burn up bright beforewe go to work on it. Cain't hardlysee what we're doin' in this dark".As with the volunteer fireman, wehave ceKtainly been aware of the"smoke," and for many months therehas been a growing awareness on thepart of public health educators of theirown need for assessing their individualand collective potentials for Civil Defense.They have felt the necessity ofworking with Civil Defense leaders Inorder to acquire an accurate vmderstandingof the total Civil Defense pictureand to establish ways by whichpublic health educators may fit in thatpicture.Over the past year public health educatorshave seen themselves increasinglyinvolved in Civil Defense activities.The Director of Public HealthEducation for the North Carolina StateBoard of Health has been assisting authoritiesin Asheville in the developmentof a coordinated program involvingwide citizen-participation in planning.Public health educators are beingcalled upon almost daily by lay andprofessional community groups in connectionwith Civil Defense—for informationon CD, to help with filmshowings and discussions on CD, forthe preparation of visual aids on CD,and to organize training courses forCD. Furthermore, many public healtheducators, working in groups whichthey themselves had helped to organizefor action, have begun to see the potentialof those groups in the totalCivilDefense effort.The public health educator movementbegan in the State in 1941 whenNorth Carolina was chosen—primarilybecause of the vast cantonment areasin the State—for the first pioneer demonstrationof public health educationas a Civil Defense measure. The blockplan utilized by Civil Defense forcesthroughout the nation was first developedby a public health educator inFayetteville, North Carolina.There are today some eighty professionallytrained public health educatorsscattered throughout NorthCarolina and employed in local healthdepartments, schools, colleges. TuberculosisAssociations, the American CancerSociety, the Health PublicationsInstitute, the State Medical Society, theParent-Teachers' Association, etc. Otherpublic health educators in the Statenot currently employed professionallywould be available and willing to servein Civil Defense.State-wide, regionally, and nationallythe past fifteen months have markedthe participation of North Carolinapublic health educators in a nimiber ofhalf-day discussion sessions with CivilDefense leaders and public health educatorsfrom all over the country. Healtheducation involvement in various aspectsof Civil Defense has been citedand accented in these sessions.The role of the health educator hasbeen projected by the Research Committeeof the N. C. Association ofPublic Health Educators as follows:"After we have finished oxn trainingcoiu"ses, most of us will be starting outto interest others in doing the CivilDefense job. We will want to help peoplebecome thoroughly involved. Wewant to stimulate them to action. Wewant to give them the right kind ofinformation.As we begin, we are convinced that ifour Democracy is worth defending, itis worth defending democratically. IfCivil Defense is thrown at people, orthey are scared into doing what oneperson or a select group of personsthinks they should do, the Civil Defensestructure may be weak, autocratic,and short-lived."We have been forwarned by the CivilDefense authorities that Civil Defensemay well be a program of many years'duration.People are more likely to come outwith the most important, long-lastingplanning and action in Civil Defenseif they are introduced first to the whole