Christian Meza
Managing Editor
Active since spring 2025, the Public Health Jaguars is a student organization committed to exploring public health in the Southside community.
President Amanda Calapan credits events that the club held last spring with elevating the organization’s growth, such as a health fair that brought other student organizations together and National Public Health Week.
“Our most successful event was a health fair. We brought in students from Pre-Health Society, Kinesiology and Psychology Club and held it in the CAB courtyard,” Calapan said. “Students would come check in with different tables, and if they learned about each table, we would have a little giveaway for them at the end.”
From the club’s beginnings of spring 2025 to now, Public Health Jaguars have grown in student organization membership from 26 to 55 total members.
Calapan said she expects the Public Health Jaguars to be more active in spring 2026, but will still hold events during the fall such as a University Health Job Fair at 11 a.m. Oct. 8 in the Central Academic Building courtyard.
“I feel like next spring is when we’re going to see our club do more. I’m building out what National Public Health Week is going to look like next spring,” Calapan said.
“Community resilience is going to be the theme. We wanna bring emergency preparedness to the forefront especially with the recent events like what happened in Kerrville.”
Calapan and the Public Health Jaguars officers are building for the future of the student organization now and hope to see them prosper and contribute significantly to the Southside community.
“My team is great, and very supportive. We’ve been able to reach out to our members who seem very interested in becoming officers in the future. Really just helping contribute to the movement and the goals of what our club wants to do,” Calapan said.
“The people in San Antonio deserve so much better within the community, especially here on the Southside. I would like to see us more involved with partners and collaborators within VIDA. To see students going out to the community and volunteering,” Calapan said.
Students that are interested in joining can keep up with Public Health Jaguars general events and meetings on https://jagsync.tamusa.edu/organization/publichealthjaguars
