To articulate and undertake a transformative approach to the development of responsible, culturally appropriate, nationally consistent and internationally relevant Indigenous genomics efforts.
Establish: Establish an Indigenous Genomics Network that provides leadership, coordination and alignment of expertise, and maximises benefit.
Enhance: Enhance Indigenous community understanding of, involvement in, and leadership of genomics research and health care.
Identify, develop, and communicate: Identify, develop, and communicate critical genomic policies of direct relevance to Indigenous Australians, health care providers, and policy operatives.
Define, share and support: Define, share and support the implementation of nationally consistent, culturally appropriate ethical, best-practice, genomic data and sample storage, management and sharing.
Build: Build the capability of an Indigenous Genomics clinical and research workforce.
Define, plan and implement: Collaboratively define, plan and implement clearly articulated pathways to benefit for Indigenous Australians as a direct result of genomics research and health care.
The network will be led by Centres of Excellence (or nodes) initially based in Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
Each node will coordinate efforts to inform core ALIGN activities in 1) Indigenous Governance of genomics research and clinical care; 2) the development of best practice data systems and data sovereignty; 3) genomics policy; and 4) developing capacity.
These represent key foundations to ensuring the equitable receipt of benefit from genomics.
In addition, each node will coordinate a Flagship Program that lays the foundations and articulates clear plans for what is required to deliver meaningful benefit to Indigenous communities. These flagships will initially focus on a) Pharmacogenomics; b) Precision Medicine; c) Immunogenomics; d) Genome Variation; and e) Rare Diseases.