Op-eds & Outreach
Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Sustainable seafood is central to strengthening food security, if viewed as more than just a natural resource
Wednesday, December 2, 2020

We want to draw our readers attention to an effort to shape a more coherent US food policy system. This open letter to the transition team promotes equity, inclusion, and economic and environmental sustainability.
Monday, June 22, 2020

The World Food Policy Center supports the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Heal Food Alliance policy brief detailing concrete approaches for improving farming opportunities for Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC).
Sunday, June 21, 2020

Dr. Sarah Bermeo (Duke Center for International Development) and Dr. Kelly Brownell (World Food Policy Center) talk to Dr. Johan Swinnen, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) about the impact of COVID-19 on efforts to address food security and malnutrition in developing countries.
Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Developing an Open Access Tool for Early Childhood Services in Durham, NC
Tuesday, May 5, 2020

The WFPC is pleased to support the efforts of the EFOD Collaborative, a group of organizations leading a movement towards equitable food oriented development. EFOD is an approach to community-based development that celebrates food culture and creates equity.
Friday, May 1, 2020

Today, May Day 2020, food chain businesses across the US are experiencing protests,
Thursday, April 16, 2020

As people around the country look for big and small ways to help their neighbors through the uncertainty that has come with COVID-19, the Rural Resilience Training Program, now available at no cost for all Farm Bureau members and staff, is a chance to do just that.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) provides temporary new authority and broad flexibility for the USDA and states to adapt SNAP to address many people’s food needs during the current public health and economic emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020

GroceryDive is capturing the changing policies of major food retailers, from store hours to paid sick leave, as the grocery industry adapts to the rapidly spreading COVID-19. Each day, retailers are announcing changes to their operations, from reduced hours to paid sick leave. All have implemented rigorous cleaning procedures and many are pushing hiring to keep up with demand.
Friday, April 3, 2020

School districts can keep providing their students with healthy meals over the spring break, even while they are closed for safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, these meals help kids stay healthy and ready to learn when school resumes.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020

What an average person knows about bees would not go far in a trivia contest. Most people don’t know that honeybees were imported from Europe to what would become the United States in the early 1600s for honey, wax, medicinal pollen, and extra income on smallholder farms. Most eaters also don’t realize that thousands of native wild bees help to sustain our food supply.
Friday, February 7, 2020

The World Food Policy Center is hosting a lunch & learn on Wednesday, February 26th, at noon in Sanford 201. Duke alumnus Janet Poppendieck ('67) will speak on the topic of food assistance programs.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Weight stigma, bias and discrimination are daily experiences for people with larger body weight. We've created this explainer video to help people understand the harm of body weight stereotypes and prejudice. The video augments a series of podcasts on this topic.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019

A new white paper outlining a framework for equitable food-oriented development has been developed by a new organization called the EFOD Collaborative and Daisa Enterprises, with support from The Kresge Foundation. The paper creates a definition for an EFOD framework - its origins, defining criteria, and impacts - and provides well-researched recommendations for sustainable field-building.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Do soda taxes actually work? They actually do in a lot of places already-- just like tobacco taxes! Kelly Brownell of Duke University's World Food Policy Center at the Sanford School of Public Policy explains.
This is part of the Extra Credit YouTube series where Duke faculty answer questions about life's curiosities.
Thursday, September 26, 2019

I recently visited Ireland to explore my heritage and to tick off a bucket list wish. I am grateful to the many people who took time to share stories of their lives.
Monday, September 23, 2019

Spencer Bokat-Lindell, a writer in The New York Times Opinion section, draws readers through the complicated challenge of grappling with obesity and its incumbent health impacts. Leaders call for changes in the food environment, governmental oversight, pharmacology, and changes in medical and cultural attitudes. World Food Policy Center Director Kelly Brownell's work is mentioned.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019

As a student, you get used to the red marks that line page margins with detailed feedback from your supervisor. A close-to-final draft just as quickly becomes somewhat of a first draft. It’s a natural part of the territory of being a student. For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a report in the Department.
Thursday, August 8, 2019
A new UN report says climate change is threatening the world’s ability to feed itself. Read more: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/08/4.-SPM_Approved_Microsite_FINAL.pdf
Wednesday, August 7, 2019

As the number of food insecure people in the world increases, it can be easy to lose hope of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 and ending world hunger by 2030.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019

“Mesdames et Messieurs…” the flight attendant began as we commenced our descent into Geneva. As she spoke, I grew excited at the thought of what my next three months would entail: 1) the privilege to work at the epicenter of global health policy, and 2) the opportunity to brush up on the French I had once learned and loved. At the time, I was committed to re-learn the language of love.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019

My name is Katie Waeldner, and I am a rising junior at Duke University studying cultural anthropology and global health while pursuing the pre-medical track. I am a student intern with Duke’s World Food Policy Center during the academic year, and I am spending the summer of 2019 in Washington, D.C.
Thursday, July 11, 2019
In early June, I had the pleasure of spending a week on the campus of Warren Wilson College in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina, thanks to Wake Forest Divinity School.
Monday, June 10, 2019

Years of progress on diet and nutrition are threatened by attempts to cut back and weaken the SNAP program, to undermine nutrition standards for school meals, and to reverse environmental protection covered by the Farm Bill.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
The World Food Policy Center is honored to have partnered with Reverend Richard Joyner to co-author this chapter and share the mission and vision of the CFLC.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
In April 2019, the Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health released the “Health Taxes to Save Lives” report, calling on all countries to significantly raise their excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary beverages.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Krista Tippett, the curator of the Civil Conversation Project, seeks to inspire people to speak together differently to live together differently.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019

“Land holds the key to unlocking the shackles of white supremacy,” wrote food justice advocate LaDonna Redmond in the forward of “Freedom Farmers,” a new book by University of Wisconsin-Madison environmental justice Professor Dr. Monica White.
Thursday, February 14, 2019

For some Americans, getting nutritious, fresh food is pretty easy and not something to think too much about. For others, it’s a day-to-day struggle. The underlying cause for why this happens is not a matter of personal motivation, or not understanding what it takes to be healthy.
Monday, February 11, 2019

Did you know that fisheries are managed largely through environmental management and economic policies? Such policies seek to optimize the economic benefits of fisheries, and to conserve charismatic species such as dolphins and turtles. But, they don’t optimize fisheries management as a crucial element of global food security. We’re working to change that.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Duke World Food Policy Center appointed three Duke students to the center’s steering committee. The students are each engaged in research with the center, and have with interests in food policy that span global health, food access, and environmental governance. The new steering committee members were introduced at the Spring 2019 meeting in February.
Thursday, January 31, 2019

In the months leading up to our Inaugural Food & Faith Convening, I focused most of my time on the logistics of meeting prep in partnership with my wonderful colleague Anna White and our WFPC team.
Monday, January 28, 2019

With such intense focus on combating obesity from the public health community, why is U.S. obesity rate still increasing?
Tuesday, January 8, 2019

We all want to raise healthy, happy kids who grow up to reach their full potential. As a Mom myself, even with my background in food science and nutrition, it’s not always easy to figure out what to do.
Monday, December 17, 2018

Kelly Brownell was featured in Gastropod's podcast "Dirty Tricks and Data: The Great Soda Wars, Part 2" along with Barry Popkin (UNC), Sara Bleich (Harvard), Adam Briggs (University of Oxford), Esperanza Ceron (Educor Consumidores), Gabriella Gómez-Mont (Laboratorio para la Cuidad), Cristin Kearns (UC-San Francisco), and Steven Gortmaker (Harvard).
Friday, December 7, 2018

At this week’s FoodCon event at the Fuqua School of Business, GOODR Founder and CEO Jasmine Crowe described the chaotic scene of a kitchen bursting at the seams: multiple pots and pans at the stove, dishes and plates piled high, steam in the air.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Americans are eating too much of the sweet stuff, and a staggering portion of it is coming from drinks like soda.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Food & Faith Convening Explores How Faith-based Communities Can Tackle Food Problems
Leaders in Christian, Muslim, Jewish and First Nations faith traditions are gathering in Durham this week to explore a common question: how can people of faith and their communities engage with food and agricultural systems as crucial to their faith practice?
Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Public health psychologist Jonathan Blitstein will join Duke’s World Food Policy Center (WFPC) in October 2018 as a Duke-RTI Scholar. Blitstein, a senior researcher with RTI International’s Food, Nutrition & Obesity Policy Research Program, will develop evaluation frameworks for WFPC programs that can guide evidence-based best practices in food systems.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018

In July 2018, Duke World Food Policy Center (WFPC) Director Kelly Brownell and staff joined North Carolina Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten and his senior team for a two day, dawn-to-dusk deep dive into North Carolina agriculture.
Thursday, July 26, 2018

The UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study and Treatment presents a special conversation with Dr. Kelly Brownell, Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Director of the World Food Policy Center. In 2006 Time magazine listed Dr.
Friday, July 20, 2018

Philadelphia's tax on soda and other sweetened drinks was upheld Wednesday when the state's highest court rejected a challenge to the law by merchants and the beverage industry.
The Supreme Court ruled the 1.5-cent-per-ounce levy is aimed at distributors and dealer-level transactions and does not illegally duplicate another existing tax.
Thursday, July 19, 2018

I went to a conference at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) on June 28 titled Science Denialism, Public Policy, and Global Health. It was presented jointly by the Rutgers Global Health Initiative and the academy.
Friday, July 13, 2018

The industry calls them SSBs. You know them as sugar-sweetened beverages, and they’re one of the many ways that an overload of sugar enters the average person’s diet.
Monday, July 9, 2018

The U.S. succeeded in watering down language in a U.N. World Health Assembly resolution to encourage breastfeeding. Under pressure from the Trump administration, language was removed that would have curtailed corporations’ promoting inappropriate foods for infants and young children. The following Duke University experts are available to comment.
Thursday, June 28, 2018

Duke’s World Food Policy Center (WFPC) recently organized a panel discussion on food security efforts across multiple scales – global to local, and urban to rural.
Thursday, June 28, 2018

Across the globe, there is more obesity, racial inequity in food access, malnutrition, diet-related disease and food waste than ever before. Those issues interconnect with poverty and inequality as a driver of food insecurity.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018

In California, the legislature passed a bill Thursday that will preempt any new local beverage or food taxes for 12 years.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018

A few years ago, Julian Xie, a Duke School of Medicine student, was at Duke Campus Farm, where he met Rebecca Hoeffler, the communications coordinator for Sustainable Duke.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The Nutrition and Food Security Contributions of Capture Fisheries – Q&A with Author John Virdin
Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Moby, a famous musician, DJ, and avowed vegan, is under fire for an op-ed he published in The Wall Street Journal.
Thursday, April 5, 2018

It seems that sports and junk food just go well together. What’s the point of even watching a football game without chowing down on pizza and wings? However, new research has revealed that many of the food items marketed through sports sponsorships are bad for you—and may be contributing to nationwide obesity rates.
Thursday, March 22, 2018

The World Food Policy Center (WFPC) at the Sanford School of Public Policy has launched an initiative aimed at helping Durham County and Edgecombe County, in eastern North Carolina, with ongoing efforts to become model food communities. Durham is the sixth-most populous county in North Carolina.
Monday, September 11, 2017

When it comes to judgment of their bodies, women can’t win.
Monday, August 28, 2017

Proposed rules would keep recipients from buying soda and junk food with SNAP dollars but sugar lobbyists are spending big to maintain the status quo. Members of Congress could be caught between their constituents and industry interests when it comes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as “food stamps.”
Monday, July 10, 2017

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University will use $5.9 million in grants to bolster efforts to improve global food policy and inform issues such as malnutrition and food safety.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017

At Duke University, the Sanford School of Public Policy has just completed two years of fact-finding and planning for a World Food Policy Center focused on new opportunities for learning and collaboration. Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School and a nationally recognized food policy expert, explains more in the following interview.
Sunday, November 6, 2016

Durham is the foodiest town in the south, yet nearly 1 in 5 of the county’s residents don't know when their next meal will be.
Thursday, April 28, 2016

The world faces profound problems in supplying nutritious food to its growing population, yet few leaders recognize the urgency of the problems, a panel of food policy experts said Wednesday.
The panelists gathered at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy to discuss “The Future of Food Policy.” They outlined a series of troubling major trends, including:
Wednesday, September 9, 2015

The world’s approach to food policy challenges is largely siloed. Some groups focus primarily on addressing obesity, while others work to combat hunger. Others focus on food safety and security. Still others concentrate on the environmental effects of modern food production.