In 2022, a contamination-linked shutdown at a major infant formula plant set off a cascading shortage, leaving shelves across Canada and the United States bare, and available options skyrocketing in price. Thousands of families went to desperate lengths to feed their newborns: joining Facebook groups to crowdsource tips about restocked shelves, driving across borders for a single can, and relying on donated breast milk from strangers just to get through the week.

Although formula production eventually resumed, the crisis revealed the fragility of “first-food systems” (those that feed the youngest in our society). Many caregivers who use formula, both exclusively and to supplement breastfeeding, continue to navigate uncertainty and rising costs.

Their stories and more are featured in Finding Formula: Confronting Insecurities, a major research project headed by Acadia University’s Dr. Lesley Frank, a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Food, Health and Social Justice, sociology professor, and director of the Fed Family Lab. This initiative, along with her two decades co-authoring the Nova Scotia Child and Family Poverty Report Card, is part of her life’s mission to connect research directly to those positioned to act. Finding Formula is supported by an interdisciplinary team, including Acadia University co-investigators Dr. Elisabeth Rondinelli (Sociology) and Dr. Jane Francis (Nutrition and Dietetics), both Research Affiliates with the Fed Family Lab — reflecting the lab’s mandate to bridge faculties in addressing complex social issues.

“This kind of research equips decisionmakers with a deeper understanding of the problems faced in our society,” says Dr. Frank. “That knowledge is crucial for crafting effective policies and solutions that impact people’s lives.”

Supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant, Finding Formula uses both hard survey data and digital storytelling to convey the lived realities behind infant food insecurities, helping the public, institutions, and policymakers see what statistics sometimes fail to capture.  

To carry out the work, Dr. Frank enlisted 13 Acadia student research assistants (RAs) from multiple disciplines—along with an ASL interpreter, a documentary filmmaker, a website designer, and a collaboration with Halifax’s Polaris Choir. The move not only gave students a rare real-world research experience and opportunities for creative practice, but also helped to shape the project’s trajectory.  

“Students are the bridge between academic inquiry and public understanding—and that’s where research can change the world,” Dr. Frank says. “They have the tools to translate findings for real audiences. By demonstrating those insights, these RAs teach me as much as I teach them.”

The Acadia student RAs who helped make this happen represented interdisciplinary backgrounds, and included those majoring in sociology, politics, English, theatre, psychology, women’s and gender studies, and law and society. Each RA applied distinct skills to the research and to the art of translating data into empathy.

Ruby Harrington, who recently defended her MA in politics, was one of the first RAs on the project. Her early work focused on developing the study’s research tools and overseeing incoming data, and the experience went on to inform her successful master’s thesis.

She was struck by the emotional weight of the stories. “I wasn’t expecting to be so impacted by the rawness of people’s experiences,” she says. “These were real-time reflections from people navigating stress, fear, and sometimes guilt, and it made clear how important this work was.”

For Ruby, the storytelling approach showed the complexity and human costs of the shortages. Reflecting on the story of a mother who drove to five stores before work, only to end up crying in a parking lot because every shelf was empty, she says, “You can see the worry on a mother’s face, hear the crack in her voice, and feel what she’s feeling. You can’t treat that as abstract data.”

Nick Lundrigan, an Honours student in English and women’s and gender studies, joined the project as it moved into building its visual components. Their work centred on shaping participant videos into concise, powerful narrative pieces. Nick recalls how emotionally challenging it was to handle such vulnerable footage. “Seeing parents document their days — the panic when the shelf was empty, the joy when a friend dropped off a can — it showed how high the stakes were,” they explain.

One moment that stayed with Nick involved a participant who talked about feeling like a failure for not being able to breastfeed. “It was heartbreaking,” Nick says. “And it made me want to make sure her story came through just as she told it.”

Honours student Brit Pulsifer Hiltz, who is double majoring in sociology and law and society, supported the project through coding, thematic analysis, and building narrative summaries within the Fed Family Lab’s collaborative writing process. What resonated most was how clearly participants’ stories illuminated the “labour” of feeding. “People often talk about feeding as a natural act,” she says, “but the diaries show how much work, emotion, and strategy goes into it, especially when systems are strained or failing.”

Brit valued how the project created a space for honouring these rarely seen forms of care. “It isn’t just data,” she notes. “It’s lived labour, and storytelling helps us respect that.”

For Sara Farguson, a fourth-year Honours English student, transforming the diary submissions into written vignettes for the website meant condensing weeks of detailed entries into short, accessible stories while protecting the integrity of each parent’s voice. “I spent a lot of time trying to maintain both the emotional truth and the narrative flow,” she explains. She remembers one particular storyinvolving a mother who had no private, sanitary space to pump breast milk at work.  “It showed me how policy gaps don’t just inconvenience parents—they create tangible harm,” Sara says.

The team’s weekly meetings, where everyone compared notes and interpretations, became what Sara calls “a classroom of shared discovery.”

Her colleagues agree. “It showed me what a liberal arts education can do when it connects disciplines,” says Ruby. “This wasn’t just research; it was understanding people’s lives in a way I’ll carry forward.”

“Sociology, politics, gender studies, English — we all brought different lenses, and it made the story stronger,” confirms Brit. “Being trusted to work so closely with people’s lived experiences was the most meaningful part of my degree so far.”