Social inequities in the food retail patterns around schools in Recife, Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the community food environment surrounding schools and its association with territorial socio-en-vironmental vulnerability in the city with the highest intraurban social inequity index in Bra-zil. Methods: this ecological observational study includes data on the presence and type of food retail in a 400 m buffer surrounding public and private schools in Recife. We have also described the Health Vulnerability Index (HVI) of census tracts and conducted multivariate analyses. Re-sults: through factor analysis, we observed two grouping patterns of food retail. The “diverse food outlets” pattern was positively associated with middle HVI (β 0.14, 95% confidence interval [CI] – 0.11; 0.16) and higher HVI areas (β 0.15, 95%CI – 0.11; 0.17), while “the large food retail chains” pattern was inversely associated with middle HVI (β-0.42, 95% CI – 0.53;-0.30) and high HVI areas (β-0.32, 95%CI – 0.45;-0.18) and positively associated with private schools (β 0.15, 95%CI – 0.030; 0.27). Conclusion: the greatest variety in food retail is in high HVI ar-eas, and large food retail chains prevail around private schools, especially in low HVI areas.