Duke prides itself on being a research institution that is not only intellectually curious, but also extremely interdisciplinary. Through Duke’s Bass Connections initiative, students and faculty come together in project teams that tackle complex issues using multiple disciplines and approaches. The program held its annual fair last week to showcase its work and to get new students connected with these exciting projects.

How does it work?

Graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty members apply for a research project in any of these five areas: Brain and Society, Information Society & Culture, Global Health, Education & Development, and Energy. Once accepted, group members work on a year-long research project, that often includes a field work component. One project in particular that combines many disciplines and interests to address an issue of global importance GANDHI, a Global Health project that studies disability from multiple cultural perspectives.

What is GANDHI?

GANDHI team members meet with Dr. Rune Simeonsson at UNC to discuss the WHO ICF-CY (International Classification of Functioning – Children and Youth), a document he helped co-write that provides a framework for diagnosing and addressing disability.

The Global Alliance on Disease and Health Innovation (GANDHI) was created in 2016 to support disabled individuals by providing them with the community reintegration tools necessary to live a healthy, comfortable life. Yukhai Lin, a Duke undergrad and GANDHI team member, shared that many hospital systems are not good at helping those the disabled reintegrate themselves in their community, and often forget about their patients after they are released. The research team recognized this flaw, and began a thorough data collection process to understand the reason for this lack of care. In the fall of 2016, team members took a seminar course, “Living with Disability Around the Globe”, in which they were paired with global partners in ten different countries to examine disability from a more specific context. In this interdisciplinary class, team members not only strengthened their knowledge of disability and its implications on global societies, but they were also able to develop strong research skills, for they ultimately synthesized their findings by creating a thorough comparison of disability in each of the countries studied.

The team also attended a conference in New Orleans to network with organizations that were conducting similar research. Lin said she interviewed doctors from The Netherlands, as well as leaders of influential health organizations to holistically understand the issues that come with helping the disabled. The team hopes to present their findings at a forum this spring, and, like many other Bass Connection projects, will continue throughout the 2017-2018 academic year. They encourage all to apply, and hope to broaden the scope of their research by adding countries in Southeast Asia and creating new opportunities for fieldwork. Some eager students have already showed interest in going to China to interview families with disabled members, says Lin.

Other Bass Connections projects at the fair spread across all disciplines, ranging from the development of effective chemotherapy drugs to the study of urban development in cities across the globe. But, what all projects share in common is a strong emphasis on research that is hands-on, collaborative, and relevant to society.

 

Post by Lola Sanchez-Carrion