A field health service partnership between Cornell University and the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) is established in Many Farms, Arizona to treat Navajo communities in an attempt to replace traditional medicine practices with Western medicine.

However, the researchers fail to address the impacts of poverty on health, including malnutrition, poor housing, and inadequate sanitation.

Meanwhile, the push to replace traditional medicine practices compounds the already-present mistrust that many Navajo people have towards practitioners of Western medicine.