Associations Between Growth Patterns, Social Factors, Morbidity and Developmental Delay in a Longitudinal Survey of Pre-School Children

In most countries the resources available for health and social welfare are limited. Plans have to be made for the most profitable use of facilities and decisions reached as to who needs most help or treatment. One approach is to prepare a profile of the individual at risk according to presence, absence or level of risk associated factors. For example, a number of workers in the third world have cal culated the risk of premature death associated with deficits in children’s growth and environment (Chen et al., 1970, Kielmann and McCord, 1978). In Britain sophisticated social risk scores related to sudden infant death have been developed (Carpenter and Emery, 1977). In both cases there is little disagreement about the potential value of such schemes of scoring, because the outcome is death. On the other hand, in a developed country, mortality rates amongst young children tends to be low and there is therefore greater interest in the association between environment, morbidity and development.