Letter

A healthy education from the BBC

Dear healthmatters — Your news report ‘TV soaps hit home with health messages’ (issue 36) stated that ‘Few broadcasting companies, however, offer support or advice at the end of their programmes’.

Over the last nine months alone the BBC has supported a wide array of health and relationships output. This has included both vast multimedia campaigns like Fighting Fat, Fighting Fit which provided telephone advice and information, online discussion forums, print material and roadshows to an audience of over 30 million, as well as the smaller scale need of the BBC2 series East - Your Health where we provided the audience with a specially commissioned booklet which highlighted health resources available to the Asian community.

Indeed, we even provided a telephone helpline providing cancer information following the hospitalisation of Peggy in EastEnders.

Within the same period we have also supported TV and radio programmes on depression, bereavement, cancer, back pain, carers, maternity issues, medical ethics and meningitis, to name but a few.

I work in a department (BBC Learning Support) where colleagues also develop beyond-the-broadcast support for a number of other genres including history, music, sport, libraries, people at work and social action. All work hard to provide a myriad of ‘support or advice at the end of their programmes’. I also believe that Channel 4 has met with considerable success with its literacy campaign Brookie Basics.