A desnutrição infantil e sua relação com a rede social e a segurança alimentar e nutricional da família

Abstract

Child malnutrition has multifactorial and correlated causes that permeate poverty, lack of food and diseases. Within this perspective, Food and Nutritional Security is related to child malnutrition and can be influenced by the individual's social network. Thus, this dissertation was developed from a literature review which lead to an article of results. This, entitled as “Child malnutrition and its relationship with the social network and the family's food and nutritional security” aimed to evaluate the relationship between the social network of malnourished children assisted in a nutrition recovery and education center (CREN-AL) with the food and nutritional security of the family. Food and Nutritional Security was considered as an outcome, predicted by the child's social network, while the adjustment factors involved were socioeconomic and housing (maternal education, participation in cash transfer programs and socioeconomic classification) and anthropometry of children. By Poisson regression, an inverse, statistically significant association between children's daily social network and food insecurity was revealed (RP: 0,94, IC95%: 0,89 – 0,99: p = 0,03), where the number of individuals in the children's daily social network was negatively associated with the probability of food insecurity. In view of the above, we highlight the relevance of this study that can assist in interventions in the social network as a way to provide improvements in food security for families in vulnerability and consequently help in the treatment of malnutrition.