Our Fellows

Javiera Arenas, Steve Bachmayer, Kim Burgas

The Idea

Equip people with a toolkit to support more personalized and positive relationships with death through language.

The Project

A team of death positive, Strategic Designers and budding Death Doulas will develop a death language toolkit with and for both individuals and communities. Their approach applies co-design methods and principles to collaboratively develop ways of normalizing and giving intentional language to death conversations in service of a better relationship with death and dying.

About

We are a group of Strategic Designers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), dedicated to using co-design methods and principles to collaboratively build tools with individuals and communities. As death positive advocates within our organization and in society at large, our mission is to normalize death and design innovative solutions in death care and end-of-life practices. Our strategic design practice involves thinking about complex problems at multiple scales, starting from identifying vision statements and north stars, applying a systemic view of the design challenge, shaping experiences that address needs, and designing artifacts and tools.

More Info

Instagram: @deathlanguages

Equitable Disposition Alliance

The Idea

Expand access to no-to-low-cost disposition for communities across the U.S.

The Project

A free, public-facing, and searchable database compiling the details of public/indigent disposition programs for the (at minimum) the two largest counties in all 50 states in the U.S.

About

The Equitable Disposition Alliance (EDA) is a multidisciplinary coalition that advocates for affordable and accessible disposition options for all.

More Info

equitabledisposition.org

Tosha Rochelle Big Eagle

The Idea

Improve end-of-life care for incarcerated women.

The Project

Create evidence-based training manuals for prison staff and incarcerated peer caregivers regarding how to conduct death cafes in prison, support advance care planning conversations, be present with those who are facing death, and cultivate an organizational culture that supports rituals acknowledging loss, grief, and death.

About

Tosha Big Eagle is a justice-impacted Indigenous, Ph.D graduate student in the Prevention Science program at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). Her research interests include health equity, harm reduction, mass incarceration, gender development, aging, death education, and Indigenous Ways of Knowing. The focus for her research surrounds adult indigenous and BIPOC groups and other vulnerable/marginalized populations. She is currently collecting data for her thesis on culturally grounded harm reduction for Indigenous people. Her hope is to create ways for Indigenous people to build connection and identity through Indigenous ways of knowing to reduce negative health outcomes and the mass incarceration of her people.

Big Eagle earned her undergraduate degree in human development, psychology, and addiction studies in 2022 from WSUV. Her research interest stems from lived experience including overcoming childhood trauma, addiction, mental health, and incarceration. She serves as the current lead graduate student researcher for two distinct research teams. The first project aligns with the objective of promoting health equity for low-income rural mothers, while the second project is focused on investigating health equity and the availability of healthcare for aging and older women with dementia and other non-normative disorders who reside in correctional facilities. She has the honor of collaborating with the Hope Team, a grassroots health initiative at the Washington Correction Center for Women.

More Info

Research Lab Website

LinkedIn

Instagram: @tosha.bigeagle

Facebook: Tosha BigEagle