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The paper by Marquis, et al,21 in this issue of the Journal exemplifies this new activity in collaborative social and behavioral epidemiologic research. Working as a team in a peri-urban shanty town in Lima, the authors combined four research approaches to demonstrate that uncorralled chick- ens were responsible for much fecal contamination of house- hold areas, that fecal specimens from these birds contained viable Campylobacter jejuni (an important causal agent of early childhood diarrhea in Lima) for up to 48 hours after deposition, that toddlers frequently transferred this fecal material from hand to mouth, and that mothers were often unaware of the risk posed for their children in allowing chickens to range freely around the home. The key to this study was direct observation of child behavior. This ap- proach was combined with microbiological studies, with a practice and beliefs survey of mothers, and with a socioeconomic survey. This simple study, small in scale but compel- ling in its findings, is a nice example of the collaborative, multidisciplinary, sociomedical research strategy that is com- ing into wider use in work on many infectious and parasitic diseases and that may prove to be especially significant in research on the communicable diseases of childhood.
Jarlais et al. (Thu,) studied this question.