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Many people deserve recognition for the completion of the book and its companion volume, Community Assessment of Natural Food Sources of Vitamin A: Guidelines for an Ethnographic Protocol. This has been a work of many years and we have been fortunate to have the cooperation and outstanding collaboration of people working in three departments in two universities, at least six research centers and institutes, three development agencies, and a committee of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. The process we followed to develop and create these two volumes is described in Chapter 3. However, we will say a great "Thank You!" to all who were involved in the various stages, and in particular to each of the chapter authors. We fully appreciate Pertti J. Pelto for his outstanding contributions to several drafts of the manual, the training workshop, and field site visits. We recognize his unfailing commitment to the role of ethnography in public health.
Perhaps most important, we want to thank the countless key-informants, respondents to interviews, and other assistants at the community level without whom all this would not have been possible, notwithstanding the involvement of those noted above. As work intended to contribute to the elimination of vitamin A deficiency, the field component among populations vulnerable to deficiency was essential to what we hope will be meaningful and useful policies and programs.
For their assistance in the various stages of securing funding for the completion of this project and its publications, we thank Richard Young and Janice Johnston of the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, and Nevin Scrimshaw of the International Nutrition Foundation for Developing Countries, Boston.
We express our appreciation to Dr. Wenche Barthe Eide of the Nordic School of Nutrition, University of Oslo, and to Dr. Barbara Underwood of the Nutrition Unit of the World Health Organization, Geneva, for their most helpful comments and perspectives during the last two years.
Finally, the two editors of this book would like to acknowledge each other and the friendship and collegial relationship they have shared, through thick and thin, for more than fifteen years.
Harriet V. Kuhnlein and Gretel H. Pelto