A different kind of security: The need for appropriate healthcare policies in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas

Much has been written about the utmost importance of tackling the security problem in Brazil’s favelas, as well as the troubled relations between favela residents and the police. In this post, Erika Robb Larkins complicates this picture by proposing that, in fact, a more pressing urgency is the limited policy attention to healthcare in these communities. She argues that improving accessibility to healthcare services and addressing preventable health problems would require longterm investment and planning, resulting in favelas’ greater buy-in of government policies.