Health and Nutrition in Disadvantaged Children and Their Relationship with Intellectual Development. Collaborative Research Report.

Three groups of children (urban black, urban white, rural white) from Middle Tennessee who live in an Appalachian-type environment were studied to assess their health and nutritional status. In addition, some attempt was made to relate aspects of physical status to intellectual adequacy as measured by the Stanford-Binet or the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. The three target groups attended day care programs with a school lunch and snack program. A comparison group did not. Findings of interest were: (1) The general health status of children examined was not inferior on national norms. (2) There was a sufficiently high incidence of visual, auditory, and speech problems to warrant specific attention. (3) The composite specimen analysis technique was successfully used because it presented a precise picture of what a child ate rather than what he was served. (4) No particular meaning was found in correlations between various indices of skeletal age, height, weight, bone density and indices of learning ability. The study was designed and executed solely to provide descriptive information. Figures and tables of physiological data are provided. (WY)