Our community partners

Our community partners are helping us co-design approaches that meet their communities' needs. This means we work with a group of community members to figure out how to best reach, talk with, and invite people from their community to take part in OurDNA.

Our partners are also driving recruitment in their communities by inviting community members to take part and working with us to organise OurDNA community events. With their help, we hope to engage thousands of Australians from diverse communities to be part of OurDNA and shape the future of healthcare.

We’re also working closely with representatives from the multicultural sector who are advising us on program-wide decisions. With the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative, an initiative of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia, we’ve brought together a group of advisers who are helping us to ensure community interests are central to OurDNA, providing input on things like how we share data.

Partner with OurDNA
Partner with OurDNA

Are you interested in learning about and helping the OurDNA program to advance medical research that might benefit your community members? Please let us know by filling in this form. A member of the team will be in contact with you soon.

Please select your preferred level of participation

 

Our key partners (organisations)

Our key partners (individuals)

Filipino community

  • Cesar Bartolome (PCC-NSW)
  • Grace Liston (PCC-NSW)
  • Mila Cichello
  • Maureen Santiago (PCC-NSW)
  • Ria Velasquez

Vietnamese community

  • Anh Linh Pham (VWA in NSW)
  • Jessica Thai (AVWA)
  • Thao Ha (AVWA)
  • Tracey Tran
  • Van Trinh

Lebanese community

  • Amira Issa
  • Bereha Khodr
  • Kamal Hadid
  • Leila Alloush (VASS)
  • Lina Hassan (VASS)
  • Wafa Jeha 

 

Our bicultural staff

  • Mi Nguyen (AVWA) 

 

OurDNA Multicultural Consultation Group

  • Abdisa Kalbesa
  • Basim Alansari
  • Dina Kerr
  • Dr. Jerome Babate
  • Dr. Saba Nabi OAM
  • Joyce Cho
  • Naseema Mustapha
  • Nidia Raya Martinez (Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative)
  • Sylvia Coombe

 

Special thanks to

  • Australian Arabic Council (Will Abdo)
  • Australian Lebanese Medical Association
  • David Joshua Delos Reyes
  • Australian Lebanese Association Incorporated
  • Thuy Linh Duong
  • Victorian Lebanese Community Council (Michael Kheirallah)

 

Our event partners

  • Adhika and Kababaihang Rizalista Inc.
  • Alpha Phi Omega
  • Ateneo Alumni Association Australia
  • Australian Vietnamese Health Professionals Association of NSW
  • Bayanihan in Melbourne Inc.
  • Filipino Australian Friendship Association of Geelong INC (FAFAG)
  • Filipino Australian Seniors Association
  • Filipino Ballers Club Melbourne
  • Filipino Nurses Diaspora Network
  • Filipino Student Council
  • NARRA Filipino group
  • Philippine Australian Sports and Culture (PASC)
  • Philippine Fiesta of Victoria Incorporated
  • Pilipino Elderly Association of South East Region (PEASER)
  • Sydney Sonatas
  • The Empowered Australian Multicultural Society Inc. (TEAMS)
  • Vietnamese Student Association
  • Young Generation Seniors (YG Seniors)

 

Our contributors

  • Angie Tran
  • Annie Bui
  • Bianca Burton
  • Chung Nguyễn
  • Cynthia Nguyen
  • Danna Ingaran
  • David Joshua Delos Reyes
  • Francis Nguyen
  • Han Le
  • Hanniel Almasco
  • Hoang Tran
  • Jessica Thai
  • Joanna Marie Li
  • John Cichello
  • Jonathan Nguyen
  • Kayla Tran
  • Kenneth M. Baba
  • Le Tam Tu
  • Maria Adriano
  • Mike Ariel Plaza
  • Peter Cichello
  • Phung Ngo
  • Ricky Nguyen
  • Thanh Nguyen
  • Thuy Nguyen Le
  • Tony Vu
  • Ysrael Camacho
  • Zuong Dang

Have questions?

If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, reach out to us.

OurDNA is a flagship project of the Centre for Population Genomics. The Centre is set up to:

  • Include under-represented communities in genomic research;
  • Explore the function and health relevance of human genes; and
  • Improve the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases. 

The Centre is a not-for-profit joint initiative from two of Australia’s leading research institutes: the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

OurDNA is partnering with communities to include ancestry groups who are mostly missing from medical research. We work with multicultural organisations, community leaders and communities to build genetic resources that represent all communities.

The genetic resources that OurDNA is building will enable all Australians in future generations to benefit from advancements in medical research. Read more about what we’re doing here.

OurDNA is funded by: 

  • The Centre for Population Genomics’ founding institutions: Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
  • People who donate funds to our research
  • Funding for this research has also been provided by the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant 2015969 (CIA Daniel MacArthur; 2022-2027) from the Genomics Health Futures Mission and by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) investigator grant 2009982 (CIA Daniel MacArthur; 2022-2026). The contents of this published material are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Commonwealth of Australia or the NHMRC.
  • The OurDNA program also receives support from Google’s Digital Future Initiative. Read more about this collaboration here.

OurDNA is currently funded until the end of 2027. It is our intention to continue our work until all Australian communities are represented and for the OurDNA database and sample bank to be available for as long as possible for researchers. 

At the moment, Australians from the following ancestry groups are under represented or entirely missing in genetic resources:

  • East African (e.g., Ethiopian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Mauritian, Somali, South Sudanese, and Sudanese)
  • North African and Middle Eastern (e.g., Assyrian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Turkish)
  • Oceanian (e.g., Fijian, Mãori, Papua New Guinean, Samoan, and Tongan)
  • South-East Asian (e.g., Cambodian, Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, and Vietnamese)

Australian doctors have also told us that it is hard to find information about these ancestry groups in the resources and databases they use to diagnose genetic and health conditions. 

OurDNA is working to engage with the communities underrepresented in genetic resources. Visit this page to check which communities we are actively working with.

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