Bass Connections Project Combines Research with Service
From revolutionizing public schools to providing nutritious food for all, Duke University’s Bass Connections Programs are changing the way Duke students, faculty, and staff interact with their local neighbors and communities around the globe.
Teams in the Bass Connections program allow faculty to pursue research in specific areas of interest while offering course credits to students who work with them. Each of the teams is grouped into six categories: Energy & Environment; Global Health; Health Policy & Innovation; Information, Society & Culture; Race & Society; or Bass Connections Open. For 2024-2025, Duke is offering nine new projects pursuing research related to the Middle East, many focused on issues in Gaza.
All research projects have a service component and require collaboration with entities such as companies, nonprofits, school systems, and government agencies. More than 500 external partners have been engaged since the inception of the program in 2013. The program “bridges the classroom and the real world” by supporting the research with multiple perspectives and methods with engagement from community stakeholders.
Nutrition Access Team Seeks to Improve Food Security for Durham Residents
One Bass team, Tracing the Roots of Nutrition Access: University to Community, identifies strategies to increase food access, decrease waste, and improve food security for Durham residents. Launched in 2023, the team has focused on mapping the $120+ billion annual governmental investments in policy and funding mechanisms, like SNAP and WIC, directly supporting families. It also analyzes initiatives like the USDA’s “Farm to Food Bank” program supporting Durham organizations providing food access opportunities like free food pantries and home delivered produce.
“The team is active at the intersection of motivation, momentum, and money to potentially make long-term changes to how our community operates.”
Scott Brummel, Assistant Director of Food and Nutrition Security, Duke Community Affairs
Building on this understanding of existing policies supporting food security, the team will now refine its scope to identify inefficiencies in these programs that result in wasted resources and, ironically, food waste.
Team leads Scott Brummel and Ryan Kane say they plan to translate their students’ personal interests into focused research objectives. Dr. Kane, a National Clinician Scholar and Medical Instructor in Duke’s Department of Medicine, researches health system strategies to provide more equitable obesity care, focusing on the social drivers of obesity and Food as Medicine. Dr. Kane expresses a developing interest in the intersection of food and climate.
Exploring the Intersection of Food and Climate
“Throughout the entire [food] supply chain, there are many different drop offs for waste,” Dr. Kane explained. He added that “we’ve done ourselves a double disservice” by allowing energy to be wasted in resource relocation and not recycling or composting unused food in the midst of growing food insecurity.
Brummel hopes the team’s research will inform Duke and Durham leaders as they take risks and make necessary shifts toward a more sustainable future, especially with the Duke Climate Commitment becoming a top priority for the university.
“Duke has the experience of doing bold things and doing them thoughtfully,” he said.
Diverse Leadership Attracts Diverse Student Involvement
The team’s leadership includes Kane and Brummel, alongside others with backgrounds in public policy, population health, and connections to the World Food Policy Center. The diversity of the team’s leaders attracts interest from a widespread group of undergraduate and graduate students.
Students play an essential role in the success of Bass projects and gain the opportunity to explore what Dr. Kane called “mixed career pathways.”
We “need to have a pipeline of interested, motivated students” who will be able to “provide diverse perspectives to inform future work in this field.”
Dr. Ryan Kane, a National Clinician Scholar and Medical Instructor, Duke Department of Medicine
Brummel sees students as essential to “filling an important gap that our systems haven’t really figured out how to close.” He added, “We’ve got a lot of passionate, smart kids who don’t need…their arms twisted to go out into the community; they just need to be provided with a framework and guidance.”
Bass Nutrition Access Project is Part of a Larger Community Effort
As food security and nutrition are identified as persistent needs in community listening sessions and can be linked to education, poverty, and housing, they remain key issues for the well-being of the Durham community. These priorities are well-aligned with other efforts in the region, including the Community Health Needs Assessment.
Food security in particular has become a priority for Duke, as shown in its Strategic Community Impact Plan, as it seeks to harness its resources as an anchor institution to make a greater impact. The Nutrition Access team’s focus on the policy landscape surrounding food security involves a large amount of awareness-raising and connection-forming among organizations. With his position, Brummel seeks to use the “perch” of Duke Community Affairs to “assess where resources are in the community and connect them.”
With its aim of impacting policy and structural changes based on methodological research, the Bass Connections program plays a key role in advancing Duke community service and education goals. Brummel believes that students “need to have the experience of doing something radical,” as “society will need them to be bold and confident” to truly solve the systemic issues that continue to challenge cities like Durham.
Photo courtesy of Elaijah Lapay.