[Association between community violence and the risk of food insecurity in a capital city in Southern Brazil].

Abstract

Food insecurity and urban violence are among the main public health problems in Brazil, with approximately half of the population having impaired access to food, in addition to most individuals having already experienced some violent event in their neighborhood. Studies have shown that violence in the neighborhood can be associated with food insecurity, however, in Brazil, this topic is little explored. This study aimed to verify the association between the perception of violence in the neighborhood and the risk of food insecurity. This study has a cross-sectional design, having been carried out with adults and older adults (n = 400) living in a health district of the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State. A stratified sampling method was adopted. Data was collected by household interviews. The presence of risk of food insecurity and the perception of violence in the community were evaluated using instruments validated for the Brazilian population. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to estimate the crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) and their respective 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Individuals that perceived their neighborhood as violent were more likely to be at risk of food insecurity (PR = 1.35; 95%CI: 1.04-1.77). Perception of neighborhood violence is associated with risk of food insecurity, independently, after adjusting for potential confounders. Issues related to the social environment, especially in relation to perceived violence, must be considered in the creation of public policies and actions against food insecurity.