Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense surveys in Asia and Africa

Abstract

I suppose I should establish my bonafides for participation in this symposium. I did participate in 3 Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense (ICNND) surveys as far separated as one on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation (1) in Montana and 2 in Asia - Burma (2) and East Pakistan (3). In fact, the Blackfeet Reservation and Burma surveys were my training grounds for becoming the clinical chief for the East Pakistan survey and later the codirector. More importantly, in 1962, I followed Alan Forbes, who is much missed at this symposium, as the deputy to Arnie Schaefer at ICNND and NIH, and did have experience of an office in the Stone House on the NIH campus. There I participated in the transmutation of the ICNND to the Interdepartmental Committee on National Development and its alignment with the Office of International Research at the NIH and a repositioning within the Department of Health and Human Services. It was from this position that ICNND went on to organize some civilian surveys in the mid-1960s, including those in Central America and Panama (4), and it was from this position that the groundwork was laid for the application of ICNND techniques to the first U.S. domestic survey outside of an Indian reservation, culminating in the Ten State Nutrition Survey (5), which documented that there was hunger in America, as well as abroad. © 2005 American Society for Nutritional Sciences.