“How Anthropology Can Contribute to a Public Health Program”: Isabel Kelly’s Work in Latin America, 1951–59

During the 1950s, the Institute of Inter-American Affairs established Cooperative Health Agreements with Latin American nations in order to provide training and resources for modern healthcare programs. Part of President Truman’s Point IV program, the agreements were designed to improve the living conditions of rural communities as the first step toward greater economic development and political stability in the region. In 1951, the Institute recruited Dr. Isabel Kelly, an American anthropologist with extensive fieldwork experience in Mexico, to evaluate the newly designed Mexican health centers in Xochimilco, Villa Cardel, Santiago-Tuxtla and Mexico City. Kelly’s reports offer significant insight into the developmental stages of these new initiatives, including site selection, interactions between health professionals and community members, and local responses to modern medical practices. Her subsequent evaluations of health centers in Puerto Rico and Bolivia allow comparative analyses between the nations, and further develop her argument that directed cultural changes required sensitivity to local customs and traditions. This paper draws on Kelly’s findings to examine the value of anthropological studies to public health programs and international cooperation in mid-twentieth century Latin America. I argue that her work reformulated the Institute’s bilateral healthcare training and anthropological fieldwork to create more specialized health centers that prioritized the needs of patients above the demands of the state.