Equity Working Group

The Equity Working Group (EqWG) promotes and supports progress towards equity in the HCA. The EqWG seeks to engage the global community spanning diverse geographic and ethnic groups to drive inclusive representation and participation, and promote equal benefit from the HCA. 

The EqWG’s initial focus is on empowerment to participate in the HCA through outreach, education, and training.  The EqWG is co-chaired by Alex K Shalek (shalek@mit.edu), Partha Majumder (parmaj2023@gmail.com) and Musa Mhlanga (musahca@mhlangalab.org).

The HCA Equity Working Group has released several publications and statements on its goals and activities:

• The Human Cell Atlas and equity: lessons learned
• The Human Cell Atlas Supports Black Lives Matter And Global Ethnic Equity
• The Commitment of the Human Cell Atlas to Humanity
• Nature Correspondence: Ensuring HCA benefits humanity

HCA Diversity Task Force (DTF)

This task force will examine issues related to the tracking and sampling of diversity in HCA data. The responsibilities of this Task Force will be to develop recommendations for:

• Appropriate metrics and resolutions for tracking genetic and geographical diversity in HCA;
• HCA goals for genetic and geographical diversity, as well as a timeline for achieving the goals;
• Ethically- and scientifically-appropriate processes for engaging underrepresented populations in sampling and monitoring efforts;
• The use of diversity-related metadata across all HCA data platforms, including appropriate metadata fields, definitions, and/or ontologies.

It is important to note that genetics and geography are not the only two elements of human diversity in the context of HCA. However, the Task Force will focus on these two aspects of diversity since they have well established biomedical significance and are potentially amenable to standardization across the HCA, but at the same time raise substantial issues of ethics, equity and prioritization that must be addressed.

The Task Force will be co-chaired by Shyam Prabhakar, Kian Hong Kock and Sophia George.  The Chairs will be responsible for reporting the group’s recommendations to the EqWG and (after EqWG approval) other HCA groups including the OC, the Genetic Diversity Biological Network, and the new Data Ecosystem Oversight Group.

Further details are available here.