Image Credits: Arts Everywhere

Tamara Oyola Santiago: Public Health Educator

Social justice, equity, and liberatory practices of education and health care.

Spring 2024

Tamara Oyola Santiago is a public health educator whose areas of life work include harm reduction services grounded in social justice, HIV/AIDS decriminalization, community upstander mobilization, restorative practices, and LGTBQIA+GNC health. Tamara is currently the Director of Wellness and Health Promotion at Student Health Services, The New School. She is co-founder of Bronx Móvil, where radical love and hope humanize. She is also part of the What Would an HIV Doula Do collective, a community of people joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. Tamara is also part of the Board of OnPoint NYC, the organization that opened the first USA sanctioned Overdose Prevention Centers. She was the former Co-director of the Institute for Transformative Mentoring at The New School.
Lecture Overview
Tamara introduced students to talking circles, peacemaking circles, or healing circles, as they are variously called, which are deeply rooted in the traditional practices of indigenous people. Circle processes can create a different path for group members to relate to and support each other in striving after a common mission or vision, especially when tensions arise in the struggle to move society forward or when different perspectives or approaches stall organizations or groups in accomplishing their goals. The structure contributes to circles being ideal for deepening relationships, processing difficult experiences, and restoring groups, teams, and communities after a rupture. Students were asked to bring a meaningful object and tell the story connected to the object.
Portrait by Andrea Geyer as part of: Anemoi - to those who insist on community (The New School Centennial Commission). 2019. site-specific, modular system of 20 photo-based portraits.
Bronx Movil at MoMA PS1's signature summer music series, Warm Up, handing out FREE nalaxone and other resources, 2024

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