Design for Local Health in Borneo

Examining how Indigenous Dayak communities living within coal mining concessions in Borneo experience and respond to intertwined health and environmental challenges, this book explores how their voices, knowledge, and lived realities can be meaningfully included in the design of local health systems and environmental health initiatives.

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, the book centres Indigenous standpoints and highlights the importance of local knowledge in shaping more responsive and equitable health design systems. It examines how Dayak communities navigate everyday conditions, negotiate environmental and institutional pressures, and articulate their own visions of health and wellbeing. Engaging both Indigenous perspectives and design approaches from the Global North through the lens of the cultural interface, the book offers a critical account of current health design and environmental systems. It introduces the concept of localised design intention as a way to foreground context, values, and community agency, and to move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions towards approaches that are culturally grounded and socially just.

This book is intended for students, academics, and practitioners in design, health, and environmental fields, as well as policymakers and researchers working with Indigenous communities or interested in inclusive, participatory, and context-sensitive design approaches.