On Indonesia’s island of Borneo, illegal and environmentally destructive logging is fueled not by corporate greed but by intense poverty. Desperate villagers turn to logging tropical forests to pay for basic and immediate needs like health care, and the impact is devastating: habitat for rare and endangered species like orangutans is destroyed, fields are flooded and crops lost, increased standing water spreads disease, and air quality degrades across the globe.

Indonesian nonprofit Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) aims to reverse this trend by integrating health care and conservation. The clinic’s innovative structure accepts non-cash payment options such as seedlings and manure to pay for medical bills, and offers massive discounts on health care to villages that agree to not illegally log in Gunung Palung National Park.

The organization became a perfect fit for Jesse Turner, a medical doctor with a background in environmental justice. Turner studied the impact of environmental change on vulnerable places and vulnerable people at SNRE, where he was inspired to pursue further multidisciplinary training in medicine. In med school, he was drawn in by ASRI’s mission and began volunteering at its clinic when he completed his residency at University of California, San Francisco, in 2013. He later had the privilege of serving as ASRI’s medical director until family needs brought him home to the U.S.

Turner says his most satisfying role at ASRI was both building capacity in and learning from Indonesian physician colleagues at the clinic. “It was amazing to witness the buy-in of the broader community to this whole different framing of health,” comments Turner. “Caring for the wilderness around us is caring for ourselves and our children.” Turner now serves in the ER and inpatient wards of four UCSF affiliated hospitals and will work in Saipan this spring. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Wv4Rt6WP8[/embed]