Introduction

The study discussed in this chapter is described in detail with multiple photographs, figures, tables and references in the book The Children of Santa María Canqué: A Prospective Field Study of Health and Growth (Mate, 1978a). The study was carried out from 1963 through 1972 in Santa María Cauqué, a Maya Cakchiquel Indian village in the central Guatemalan highlands (Figure 1). Prior to this study, the community was the "infection control" in the pioneer three-village study of nutrition and infection interactions in 1959-1962 (Scrimshaw et al., 1967a,b). The other villages were Santa Catarina Barahona (the nutrition control) and Santa Cruz Balanyá (the nonintervened control). The Health Clinic in Santa María Cauqué, supported by the Ministry of Health and the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), was expanded in 1963 to facilitate more detailed epidemiological observations, laboratory studies, and medical therapy. The primary data management was carried out directly at the village; final editing, filing, and analysis of data were performed at the Division of Environmental Biology of INCAP in Guatemala City and the Division of Biostatistics of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine of the University of Washington in Seattle. The conceptual idea, objectives, results, and significance of the study have been published in book form. This article summarizes the main scientific results of the study, and their implications for modern public health and human development.