Health and nutrition education unit in a children's hospital.

Abstract

Prevention is better than cure is probably more applicable to promoting health in childhood than in any other age group. Nutrition rehabilitation units1 have been established in several developing countries in an effort to prevent the protein energy malnutrition that is so common in most of them. A similar sort of unit, modified to include all aspects of child care, seemed to be needed in the underprivileged community of the east end of London, where about 35 ?0 of the children are the sons and daughters of immigrants; where social classes IV and V pre dominate; and where there are many single-parent families and families with one parent in prison. The health and nutrition education unit, so far as we know the first in Great Britain, was established in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in September 1976, and we describe here the work of its first 18 months.