Food insecurity in a Brazilian transgender sample during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Transgender people often live with social vulnerability, largely promoted by gender-based prejudice. Our aim in this article was to raise preliminary data on how the COVID-19 pandemic and perceived prejudice have contributed to the problem of food and food insecurity in the transgender communities in Brazil. We conducted a web-based cross-sectional study, in which 109 transgender people from all regions of Brazil participated. We used the Chi-Square test and Poisson regression modeling with robust variance to estimate the association between food insecurity and the investigated factors. In our sample, 68.8% of transgender people experienced food insecurity, of these, 20.2% experienced severe food insecurity. Our results showed that the difficulties in purchasing food in the transgender community predate the COVID-19 pandemic, yet that the restrictive measures adopted have also impacted overall access to quality food. However, the main explanations for food insecurity were income and employment. In predicting food insecurity, the experiences of prejudice must be considered, and give rise to the hypothesis that specific conditions to which transgender people are exposed explain, to some degree, their vulnerability to food insecurity.

The impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on tuberculosis notifications and deaths in the state of São Paulo, Brazil: a cross-sectional study

“…The transgender population in Brazil has been excluded from education, healthcare, and social assistance, being affected by extreme violence and stigma fueled by gender-related prejudice. 41 , 42 Additionally, the nationality or migration status of patients with tuberculosis were not made available for this study. São Paulo is home to international migrants who often experience social and economic vulnerability upon arrival in Brazil.…”