Harnessing the power of virtual reality technology to enhance public health genomics skills in Africa

Africa must sustainably bridge the public health genomics skills gap to build a workforce that responds with speed, quality, and scale. Virtual reality offers a novel and cost-effective solution to address this gap, but its implementation must follow best practices. Africa’s public health genomics capacity has expanded substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic; however, workforce development is currently constrained by access, cost and sustainability. In this Perspective, the authors present virtual reality as a strategic tool for sustainable and equitable capacity building in genomics.