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. 2022 Mar 22;11(7):901.
doi: 10.3390/foods11070901.

Food Availability in Different Food Environments Surrounding Schools in a Vulnerable Urban Area of Santiago, Chile: Exploring Socioeconomic Determinants

Anna Christina Pinheiro  1   2 , Daiana Quintiliano-Scarpelli  1 , Jacqueline Araneda Flores  3 , Claudio Álvarez  4 , Mónica Suárez-Reyes  5 , José Luis Palacios  6 , Tito Pizarro Quevedo  7 , Maria Rita Marques de Oliveira  2   8
Affiliations

Food Availability in Different Food Environments Surrounding Schools in a Vulnerable Urban Area of Santiago, Chile: Exploring Socioeconomic Determinants

Anna Christina Pinheiro et al. Foods. .

Abstract

The analysis of the food environment is used to identify areas with gaps in the availability of healthy foods and can be used as a public policy assessment tool. In recent decades, Chile has implemented several strategies and regulations to improve food environments, with encouraging results. Little is known about the scope of these measures in socially vulnerable environments. This study is part of a project that seeks to build an integrated intervention model for healthy school environments in a vulnerable area of Santiago, Chile. The objective of this study was to evaluate the availability of healthy and unhealthy foods around schools and the relationship between it and socioeconomic determinants of the school community in the Chilean context. A cross-sectional study to measure the food environment of informal markets (street food), formal markets (stores), and institutions (schools) was conducted in and around 12 schools (100 m surrounding schools) in a vulnerable urban area of Santiago, Chile. A lack of healthy foods was observed, which was related to some socio-economic determinants and the multidimensional poverty was the most relevant. The diagnosis of food environments around schools can represent an important target for governments to implement policies focused at improving the availability of healthy foods.

Keywords: healthy foods; multidimensional poverty; polices; school food environments; unhealthy foods.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of food availability classification inside schools and the 100 m surrounding each school in the six studied municipalities.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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