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Our VisionA world where people in underserved areas have the tools and capacity to care for their own communities with minimal dependency on outside aid.
Why Barefoot?Acupuncture as “Barefoot” means “feet” on the ground. People on the ground in given place are able to offer care for that community.
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MEET THE WOMEN DOING THE WORK
AIDING MIGRANTS AND MAQUILA COMMUNITIES
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At the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, this year we celebrate the power of women coming together to care for their community. You can directly support our volunteers as they help their community recover amidst ongoing violence, racism, increasing poverty, and health disparities in the border region.
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Our Story
The Barefoot Acupuncture Movement has evolved over the past decades through projects in Africa and Latin America in response to violence, poverty and refugee displacement. Acupuncturists in Uganda and Guatemala partnered with refugee care programs to address community trauma and taught their model to our partners responding to violence in Ciudad Juarez Mexico. Since 2011, our partnerships in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, and Nicaragua have allowed us to continue to innovate acupuncture-based community health training programs.
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MissionBarefoot Acupuncture Movement (BAM) partners with underserved communities to build resiliency through acupuncture. Global in scope, Barefoot Acupuncture Movement is an umbrella project within Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare, a 501c-3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to make healthcare accessible and affordable to people of all income levels through the support of local communities. Through our international Barefoot Collective of trainers, we work to replicate models of education for community health workers in areas of high need around the world.
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OUR GLOBAL TEAM
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We are doctors and acupuncturists, counselors and nurses, teachers and students, everyday people working to help everyday people that use tiny needles to support community recovery and resilience building in marginalized areas of the world.
LET'S CHAT!
Our international Barefoot Collective team has decades of experience assisting community projects to integrate acupuncture, moxa and acudetox into disaster relief, addictions and mental health care, trauma recovery, general wellness, as well as long-term humanitarian development. By working through partnerships, we assist with project planning, needs assessment, education including training the trainer programs, mentorship, and apprenticeship.
Let us know who you are, and let's set up a time to learn more about you and your project and to explore how we best can assist. REQUEST SUPPORT FROM OUR TEAM
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Bob Quinn, LAc, DOMTeacher / Curriculum Developer
Associate Professor and Clinical Supervisor, National University of Natural Medicine, School of Classical Chinese Medicine, Portland, Oregon |
Francela Nohelia Morales GazoTeacher
Nohelia assists with coordinating our Barefoot School in Nicaragua, where she serves as a Barefoot Health Promoter offering acupuncture for farming communities. She is a longtime youth leader for Tierra y Vida (Earth and Life), which assists with agricultural and environmental education in rural Nicaragua. For many years she has been involved with similar Base community projects, working to promote community development in her country. |
Jean-Paul Dedam , MDTeacher
A Family Medicine doctor who is also board certified in Medical Acupuncture, Jean-Paul grew up on the coast of Maine and did his medical training at Greater Lawrence Family Medical Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts with a focus on healthcare for the underserved. After residency, he moved with his wife Tamara to New Mexico to work for Indian Health Service at ACL Hospital. While in medical school, Jean-Paul started Herman@s Por la Salud, a nonprofit working in Nicaragua to address the socio-economic determinant of health. Along with Tamara, they still run Hermanos from their organic farm, Micelio in Carazo, Nicaragua. Hermanos was one of the supporting partners behind Barefoot Acupuncture Schools in Mexico and in Nicaragua. He and Tamara live in Albuquerque, NM with their niece Patricia. |
Kata JapuncicTeacher & Acupuncturist
Kata is a registered acupuncturist, Community NADA ear acupuncture trainer & clinic supervisor in Australia. She is founder of Acupuncture for Community, a non-profit organization based out of Gadigal country, Sydney. Starting as a Street Medic, Kata apprenticed as a Barefoot Doctor with Ron ‘Doc’ Rosen, a co-founder of the Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project (GUAMAP) until 2006, establishing a free community acupuncture clinic in Amsterdam. She has provided acupuncture treatments and training support in partnership with autonomous social centres; HIV/AIDS support services; peer-based harm reduction; PTSD, war-related injury rehab services and humanitarian aid relief. She holds a Bachelor of Health Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine. |
Lucia Darlach, PhDAcu Detox Specialist
A Bolivian and Argentinian native, Lucia is our former Board President and works as a community psychologist and clinical supervisor at UNM Hospitals. Her focus is addressing physical & sexual violence perpetrated on young women, with a recovery via feminist psychology. Previously, she worked as a supervisor and therapist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago in a program to reduce community violence via Mexican-American and African-American multi-family & mother-daughter groups. She co-founded the Santo Domingo Pueblo acudetox program in New Mexico, and has helped organize Barefoot Acupuncture trainings for the past 6 years. |
Nancy Ortiz-GonzalezLatin America Coordinator
Nancy is Co-founder and teacher of our Barefoot Acupuncture Schools in Nicaragua and Mexico, and Coordinator for the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement in Latin America Nancy holds an MA in Psychology and has worked as a psychologist since 2007. She has extensive experience in Human Resources within non profit and international humanitarian aid organizations. Nancy lives with her family in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where she volunteers in her parish church leading choir, in social ministry, and offering NADA acudetox and community acupuncture after mass and as part of refugee care within Diocesan migrant shelters. |
Ryan Bemis, DOMExecutive Director
Ryan is co-founder of the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement, and has over 20 years of community health and outreach experience. He works locally in the US-Mexico border region in refugee/migrant and homeless care, and with harm reduction, addictions, and jail-based and correctional programs. He is licensed as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine in New Mexico, and is a Registered Trainer in acudetox (NADA ear acupuncture). Ryan is also a writer and a public speaker and educator. His writing has been published in America Magazine, Medicinal Roots Magazine, Latina Lista, Frontera List, AcuTake and J&M Reports. |
Sara IbarraTeacher
Sara is an assistant teacher and co-founder of our Barefoot School in Mexico. She has been working as a volunteer Barefoot Health Promoter offering acupuncture in her home town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico since 2011, after helping found our projects in response to violence in the border city. She also volunteers in her local church in community education and offering care and food supplies for low-income families. |
Tamara TrejoAcupuncture Detox Specialist
Originally from Venezuela, at 18, Tamara moved to Boston and put herself through school, finishing an undergrad degree in community planning and a masters in public policy. Tamara is the co-founder of Micelio: Centro de EcoSalud with her husband Jean-Paul Dedam. Micelio is an organic, teaching farm in El Rosario, Nicaragua with an emphasis on regenerative agriculture, alternative healing, natural building and sustainable development. In 2019, Tamara and JP helped start the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement's project in Nicaragua. Tamara currently lives in Albuquerque, NM with her husband. |
Terry L. WilliamsAcupuncture Detox Specialist
Terry has been serving as a volunteer NADA Acudetox provider (ADS) within our non-profit organization since 2013 serving refugees and the homeless in the US/Mexico border region of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nicaragua. He currently serves as a volunteer for the International Rescue Committee. In 2016, he served as a project coordinator with orphanages and a day care center in the countries of Mozambique, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), and South Africa. He is the former Director of the Collegiate Recovery Program - University of Texas at El Paso. |
Tracy Thorne, MAcOM, LAcTeacher
Tracy is a teacher for our Barefoot Acupuncture Movement, and developed our Moxa curriculum for health promoters in Mexico. She earned her master’s degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (MAOM) from the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA) in Massachusetts. Prior to that she received her MA in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She specializes in Keiraku chiyro acupuncture, Japanese moxa, and Classical Chinese herbalism and pediatric and adult care in Portland, Oregon. She has been a faculty member at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine for 10 years. |
Will Hall, MA, DiplPWTeacher
Will is a therapist, trainer, and community development worker focused on experiences labeled bipolar, schizophrenia, and psychosis. He is author of The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs and Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness . Will also is the host of Madness Radio, and is currently a PhD candidate in psychiatric epidemiology at Maastricht University. He is trained in Open Dialogue and Jungian Process Work, and was certified in NADA ear acupuncture at Lincoln Recovery in 2006. |
Our History and Roots
Our Roots
The Barefoot Doctor movement offered care for millions of people in rural and underserved areas in Asia starting in the 1950’s, filling a need where urban-trained doctors would not work.
The World Health Organization adopted this model and started similar community health training projects. Over the past 50 years, a variety of global health programs cultivated this model in addiction and recovery, refugee, and community health projects.
The World Health Organization adopted this model and started similar community health training projects. Over the past 50 years, a variety of global health programs cultivated this model in addiction and recovery, refugee, and community health projects.
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Board of Directors
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Advisory Council
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