Co-designing an Inclusive Community Engagement Toolkit with a Community Health Center

Native American Health Center (NAHC) provides comprehensive services to improve the health and well-being of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and residents of the surrounding communities. My Pathways to Equity Fellowship team (with Open Architecture Collaborative) comprised of a multidisciplinary group - designers (UX, architecture, industrial) and healthcare. Our collaboration with NAHC began with a shared goal: co-design a space of belonging at the Native American Health Center's proposed community cultural center, one that held the values and culture of a diverse community. Above image courtesy NAHC. Then the pandemic arrived and NAHC's priorities moved. Their community was stretched, and a participatory design process was not something anyone had room for. What NAHC needed instead was the scaffolding to run that process themselves, later, on their own timing