Sanitary Skills: Health visiting past to present

Health visiting in the UK arose as a public health profession in the Victorian era. Health visitors supported and supervised mothers, teaching them hygiene, infant feeding and diet.

Theirs was a multi-faceted role, which required nursing skills, sanitary knowledge and training in law and disease-control. Dr Jane Brooks (University of Manchester) looks at the changing role of health visitors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while Dr Cheryll Adams and Professor Dame Sarah Cowley (Institute of Health Visiting) will explain later changes, and the impact health visitors have on the health of the public today.