Reports such as this typically begin with a statistic designed to highlight a problem. The girls and boys to whom this edition of "The State of the World's Children" is dedicated are not problems. Rather, each is a sister, brother or friend who has a favourite dish, song or game; a daughter or son with dreams and the desire to fulfil…

This monograph derives from a conference sponsored by the Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences. The goals of the conference were (1) to establish channels of communication between health care evaluators from different disciplines and from different countries in the Americas, and (2) to promote an exchange of…