The Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) was launched at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting (GC) hosted at the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 27-30 October 2019.  The GC meeting is a convening of more than 1000 key leaders from across the global community to share best practices, and to seek solutions to common challenges affecting global health.

The scientific track session pertinent to PHA4GE at this conference was “Leveraging pathogen genetic sequencing in Africa”. During this track session applications of pathogen sequencing in resource limited settings reinforced the value addition of including sequencing as part of the strategy to respond to disease outbreaks.

On the last day of this scientific track a few speakers shared ideas of how the scientific community can come together to leverage existing technological advances to support a global initiative that would collectively respond to public health needs. Presentations by Alli Black (Next strain), Bronwyn MacInnis (Broad Institute), and David Aanensen (Pathogen Watch) were then followed by an outline of the PHA4GE consortium by Alan Christoffels and Duncan MacCannell.