The problems of social-economics, culture, politics, and health, among those, are factors that influence both directly and indirectly the style of life of hundreds of thousands of people, due to the lack of economic resources, unemployment, poverty, their own culture can lead to a more serious state of health, consequently causing problems of their nutritional state, such as obesity in its varying degrees of malnutrition, in addition to the presence of preventable illnesses such as acute respiratory disease (IRA), that seriously affect the infant population. Factors, consequences, everything becomes one vicious circle that can be broken thereby preventing more deaths that could be averted with time. Faced with this situation, in general, alarming people, the need to conduct an investigation is imposed in the field, in social awareness of the turning point that rural areas are faced with, in my case the rural area of the province of Imbabura, taking rural communities belonging to the three predominant ethnicities in our province, which are Indigenous, Black, and Mixed-Race. A realistic study of these areas safely projected confidant results, since its base will be the taking of anthropometric measurements (weight-height) with children under the age of 5, surveys about the presence of IRA in mothers of these children, with the purpose of subsequently establishing a relation between the nutritional state, IIRA, ethnicity of the study population. I hope that this work and its results are constituted as an element and factor of change towards the welfare of these sectors, those in need and vulnerable, it is clear, in collaboration with government organization, health team, and over all the community participation, with the sole purpose of improving this situation and of achieving a better development of these sectors and of the country in general.

In this investigation the seric retinol levels were determined in order to relate them with consumed diets by preschool- and school-aged children and the prevalence of anemia in the communities of Cuambo and La Rinconada, Imbabura province, in order to later compare them with reference values. Blood samples were taken from 74 children from the two communities, 30 in La Rinconada and 44 in Cuambo, beneficiaries of the Benson Institute, to determine retinol, ferritin, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. Also, a 24-hour record with frequency of food consumption survey was given to the studied children's parents, making a sample of 56 families. Among the principal results we can determine that the inhabitants of the two communities have a low consumption of foods rich in Vitamin A compared to recommendations, despite having family gardens that include a large quantity of foods rich in this micronutrient.

The rural communities of the province of Imbabura present multiple problems of environmental, educational, and economic kind. Previous studies show that the rural communities of the Ecuadorian population present serious problems of health and nutrition, among those that excel are: poliparasitosis, respiratory infections and diarrheal, malnutrition, deficiency of micro nutrients, sanitary deficiency, scarce economic resources and low level of instruction. All these factors have caused a decrease in the productive capacity of the country and affected their level of development. In addition, delay exists in size in the students, which leads to a decrease in the capacity for physical work, alterations of mental development and frequent repetitions of the school grade. The malnutrition is a product of biological, social and environmental factors directly influence good health, intellectual development and academic performance. In the province of Imbabura, there is no up to date information relating to diet, nutrition and some aspects of the health of the students. Therefore it has been considered important to perform a food, nutritional and health diagnosis that contributes to the planning and development of actions that will improve the situation.