This year IIB students, faculty and staff have been actively involved in community engagement and outreach efforts. Through participation in local events, volunteer programs, and holiday initiatives, the team has worked to foster connections, support important causes, and give back to the Durham community. These activities reflect our ongoing commitment to making a positive impact both locally and beyond.
September 28 - Durham Pride Parade
This year the IIB EDI Committee along with volunteers, hosted a booth at the Durham Pride Parade. The purpose of the booth was to promote outreach to the local community, telling people about science career paths as well as ongoing research affiliated within our department. We had information displayed at the booth about our department, ongoing Duke HIV research, as well as interactive Immunology related games. In total we had over 250 people visit our booth and made wonderful connections with people of the Durham Community.
October 12 - Keep Durham Beautiful
This year we participated in the 2024 Durham Big Sweep that happens in the month of October. It's Durham’s largest litter pickup event. Last year we cleaned up Whippoorwill Park and this year we had a great opportunity to help out at the Durham VA campus. We picked up litter on the campus and planted flowers. We had a great time volunteering and plan to reconnect with them for future events.
November 23 - Root Causes: Fresh Produce Program
This semester we also volunteered with the Fresh Produce Program, a volunteer organization started by medical students to help provide and distribute food for community members experiencing food insecurity and/or diet-related chronic conditions. At this event we packaged food and loaded them into cars for distribution. We had a great time as a group packaging the food and some of us plan to come back in the future and help to distribute the groceries to individual homes.
December 4 - Duke Child Life Program
We hosted a holiday gift drive for the Duke Child Life Program. Items were dropped off at a collection box in Jones 117A at any time during the collection dates. These items were taken to Duke Child Life Program and delivered to pediatric patients at Duke Medical Center during the holiday season.