Animating Questions
- How can exploring social safety net and farm to institution economics lead to improved public health outcomes, particularly for marginalized populations?
- Where are gaps in public health policy and practice?
- How do people experiencing food insecurity cope with those challenges and navigate food systems and social programs?
- How can we invest differently to effectively address food insecurity?
- How can the actual food buying/using/disposal behaviors of consumers inform policy decisions?
Projects
Peer Reviewed Research Papers
Moving policies towards racial and ethnic equality: The case of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Hugo B. Jales, Judith Liu, Norbert L. Wilson. Moving policies towards racial and ethnic equality: The case of the supplemental nutrition assistance program. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 04 May 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12402
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Changes in Children’s and Adolescents’ Dietary Intake After the Implementation of Chile’s Law of Food Labeling, Advertising and Sales in Schools: A Longitudinal Study
Fretes, G., Corvalán, C., Reyes, M. et al. Changes in children’s and adolescents’ dietary intake after the implementation of Chile’s law of food labeling, advertising and sales in schools: a longitudinal study. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 20, 40 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-023-01445-x
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Combatting illegal fishing through transparency initiatives: Lessons learned from comparative analysis of transparency initiatives in seafood, apparel, extractive, and timber supply chains
John Virdin, Tibor Vegh, Blake Ratcliff, Elizabeth Havice, Jack Daly, Jack Stuart. Combatting illegal fishing through transparency initiatives : Lessons learned from comparative analysis of transparency initiatives in seafood, apparel, extractive, and timber supply chains. Marine Policy, Volume 138, 2022, 104984, ISSN 0308-597X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.104984.
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Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Food Pantry Use and Barriers in Massachusetts during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Marriott JP, Fiechtner L, Birk NW, Taitelbaum D, Odoms-Young A, Wilson NL, Clay LA, Zack RM. Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Food Pantry Use and Barriers in Massachusetts during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Nutrients. 2022; 14(12):2531. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14122531
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Is it more convenient to waste? Trade-offs between grocery shopping and waste behaviors
Ellison, B., Fan, L., & Wilson, N. L. W. (2022). Is it more convenient to waste? trade-offs between grocery shopping and waste behaviors. Agricultural Economics, 00, 1– 15. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12720
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Food Choice With Economic Scarcity and Time Abundance: A Qualitative Study
Folta, Sara C., Oyedolapo Anyanwu, Jennifer Pustz, Jennifer Oslund, Laura Paige Penkert, and Norbert Wilson. “Food Choice With Economic Scarcity and Time Abundance: A Qualitative Study.” Health Education & Behavior : The Official Publication of the Society for Public Health Education 49, no. 1 (February 2022): 150–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/10901981211045926.
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Visualizing the food landscape of Durham, North Carolina
Joseph L. Graves III, Gizem Templeton, Lauren Davis, Seong-Tae Kim. Visualizing the food landscape of Durham, North Carolina. Stat, Volume 10, Issue 1, December 2021, e347.
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What food waste solutions do people support?
Linlin Fan, Brenna Ellison, Norbert L.W. Wilson; What Food Waste Solutions do People Support?; Journal of Cleaner Production 3030 (2022) 129907. https//doi.org/10.1016/j.clepro.2021.129907
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Understanding Micro-pantries as an Emergency Food Source During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Norbert L W Wilson, Larissa Calancie, Janna Adkins, Sara C Folta, Understanding Micro-pantries as an Emergency Food Source During the COVID-19 Pandemic, J Nutr Educ Behav. 2022 Apr;54(4):299-310. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2021.11.002. Epub 2022 Jan 14.
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Putting grocery food taxes on the table: Evidence for food security policy-makers
Yuqing Zheng, Jianqiang (Jason) Zhao, Steven Buck, Shaheer Burney, Harry M. Kaiser, Norbert L. Wilson. Putting grocery food taxes on the table: Evidence for food security policy-makers. Food Policy 101 (2021) 102098
Read MoreReports
Feed the Future and Conflict Integration: A Toolkit for Programming
This toolkit is a groundbreaking effort to ensure that all investments under the United States Government’s Global Food Security Strategy integrate conflict. The better we understand the connections between conflict and food systems, the better we can meet the goals of the Feed the Future Initiative while also contributing to a more peaceful world. Fragility, conflict, and violence can easily undermine progress under Feed the Future, but there are steps we can take to mitigate these dynamics and capitalize on opportunities for peace throughout our programming. The fight against global food insecurity is facing powerful headwinds. While the stresses on the food system are numerous, this toolkit focuses its attention on conflict. Why? Because conflict remains the largest single driver of global food insecurity worldwide. The metrics were alarming even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted global supply chains and raised apprehension about impending crisis. Conflict was responsible for roughly 72 percent of acute food insecurity worldwide in 2021. And as many as 60 percent of the world’s 828 million hungry live in regions subject to war and violence. Conflict-affected areas are the frontlines in the global fight against hunger, and addressing food insecurity increasingly means addressing conflict, violence, and fragility.
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Moving the Needle on Global Food Systems Financing: Translating Evidence from Health to Agriculture Development Finance
Duke University’s World Food Policy Center partnered with the Duke Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University and Open Consultants to explore how innovative approaches from the global health sector can be adapted to food systems financing to ensure we are more resilient to avoid or better address future crises. We acknowledge that there are important differences between the health sector and the agriculture and food sectors. However, the dramatic innovation in pandemic response from the health sector provides a source of new ideas for the agriculture and food security sectors. With lessons from the health sector as a lens, we conducted desk research, and key informant interviews and two focus groups (both referred to in this report as KIIs) to explore: the role of grant-based mechanisms, resource mobilization with a focus on innovative financing mechanisms, crisis coordination, and global functions (i.e. activities with transnational benefits).
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Opportunities for the Committee on World Food Security – Post Food Systems Summit 2021
This paper is a think-piece on the role of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in supporting outcomes associated with the Food Systems Summit (FSS). It explores key questions the CFS and its advocates are likely to grapple with moving forward. The goal of the analysis is to identify potential pathways for the CFS within the global governance environment, as policymakers attempt to spur action toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The CFS is a multi-stakeholder, intergovernmental forum in the United Nations (UN) system that develops and endorses global policy recommendations related to food security and nutrition. It does…
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Survey Analysis: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on U.S. Hunger Relief Organizations (August-November 2020)
This study is a detailed and nuanced story about COVID-19’s impact on food insecurity in the U.S. through the experiences of private, charitable non-profit organizations. These Hunger Relief Organizations (HROs), such as Food Banks, food pantries, and anti-hunger Advocacy Organizations, were on the front lines of food assistance, ensuring people who were in need got access to food during the most worrisome months of the pandemic. This research sampled the experiences and activities of these HROs across the U.S. from June through September 2020. Goals of the research inquiry To document the actions, needs, barriers, and successes of Hunger Relief…
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Food Justice Case Study: Communities in Partnership
This report presents a multi-year case study of Communities in Partnership (CIP), a predominantly Black women-led, Black women founded, community-accountable organization that addresses social determinants of health through interconnected programs addressing food justice, entrepreneurship, and workforce development, affordable housing, transformative justice, and leadership development. This case study is intended to maintain its specificity and local contextuality while pointing to some key themes that may have broader utility for other organizations. This report is co-authored by the World Food Policy Center (WFPC) and CIP. These organizations have collaborated on community participatory research & capacity-building projects for over four years. The WFPC…
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Research Brief: North Carolina Food System Resilience Strategy
This strategy brief focuses on North Carolina and contextualizes the current moment against the historical landscape. The audience for this project is philanthropy. As a group with substantial power, it asks how philanthropy can be a partner to address some of the most entrenched inequities. How, in other words, can philanthropy help create more equity and resiliency in the North Carolina food system? COVID-19’s effect on the food system has been complex. Despite the pandemic’s initial shock to supply chains, the system has largely functioned as intended. Yet that is not necessarily a relief for many, who have experienced harm…
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Impact of COVID-19 on Restaurants in Durham, North Carolina June-September 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic affected industries where indoor person-to-person contact is the norm. This study documents the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic-related government restrictions on the Durham, North Carolina restaurant industry by late summer of 2020. Sixty-four restaurant businesses in Durham, North Carolina participated in the survey between June-September 2020. Participating restaurants were mainly locally-owned businesses. The survey captured the type of restaurants (e.g. range of annual sales, ownership, etc.); the impact of COVID-19 on sales, employees, supply chains, support needed by the restaurant industry; and additional commentary in order to give space to elaborate. Key Takeaways More than 70% of…
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USAID Water and Conflict: A Toolkit for Programming
As of 2015, 177 million people lacked basic drinking water and 284 million people did not use basic sanitation in conflict-affected settings. In the face of increasing and protracted conflict and crises around the world, USAID strives to lead and influence development programming to move beyond conventional water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) service provision to advance water security, sanitation, and hygiene (WSSH) in fragile and conflict-affected settings. This practical toolkit provides guidance for implementing partners, USAID staff, and other stakeholders who support the Global Water Strategy and White House Action Plan on Global Security to better understand the connection between water management and key risk factors associated with conflict, address those links, and incorporate conflict integration into water security, sanitation, and hygiene programming. The toolkit is one of a series of forthcoming USAID resources around conflict including land, Feed the Future, food systems, and conflict integration.
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North Carolina Food System Resilience Strategy
This project focuses on North Carolina and contextualizes the current moment against the historical landscape. The audience for this project is philanthropy. As a group with substantial power, it asks how philanthropy can be a partner to address some of the most entrenched inequities. How, in other words, can philanthropy help create more equity and resiliency in the North Carolina food system? A Strategy Brief version of the report is also available.
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Racial Inequities in Food Systems – An Analysis of the Mexican and Brazilian Cases
The goal of this project was to analyze how racial inequities play out in food systems in Mexico and Brazil, as well as to identify gaps in the existing scholarship on the topic in these countries. The Latin American narrative of racial mixing creating post-racial societies (known as mestizaje/mestiçagem) is the backdrop for this analysis. Although large racial disparities show up in both countries’ food systems, ideas of mestizaje heavily influence the scholarship produced on the topic and often obscure the racial aspect of social inequities. Executive Summary The majority of the literature on the topic of racial inequities in…
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