Doha: Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) today launched its Autism Strategy for 2025-2035. This strategy is part of its efforts to develop support mechanisms across its system, facilities, services, policies, and knowledge, in line with Qatar's National Autism Agenda.
According to Qatar News Agency, the Qatar Foundation Autism Strategy 2025-2035, unveiled today at an Education City event, has been developed in alignment with Qatar's national autism agenda and efforts, reflecting how autism is one of the nation's foremost health challenges. It highlights Qatar Foundation's (QF) role as a key stakeholder in national development and a longstanding champion of disability rights, accessibility, and inclusion.
Created following the establishment in late 2023 of a QF Autism Task Force, the strategy unifies QF's existing work in the field of autism. It identifies how gaps can be bridged to ensure those with autism and their families have the best possible support, outlining 10-year targets to be achieved in multiple areas, including education, employment, community support services, healthcare, and research and innovation.
Through the implementation of the strategy, by 2035, QF aims to achieve a 25 percent reduction in the average age at which autism is diagnosed. It also targets a 50 percent increase in the number of young people with autism in higher education, vocational training, or employment. Another goal is for 50 percent of families with autism to report an improved quality of life, alongside a 50 percent increase in QF-developed technology and innovative products and services that support improved outcomes for people with autism.
Among the cornerstones of the strategy are expanding Renad Academy-a school under QF's Pre-University Education-to ultimately cater to students aged from 3-21 years, and implementing measures for early autism identification and intervention within QF schools.
QF will establish a community hub offering digital solutions to parents of children with autism, who will also benefit from QF's provision of culturally relevant autism support, counseling, and peer networks. A vocational hub will also be created at Education City to provide autism programs and services.
The strategy earmarks AI as a key focus, with QF leveraging this technology and its partnership-building capacity to generate innovations that advance early autism detection, interventions, education, assistive technology, and parental support. Genomics and multi-omics research at QF will seek to identify the genetic factors behind autism, enabling personalized healthcare and therapies to be developed. QF's Sidra Medicine-a world-leading women's and children's hospital and medical research center-will introduce an integrated care model that meets the unique needs of people with autism.
"Qatar Foundation has always aimed to build an inclusive society, and this strategy is one of the key steps that we are taking in that direction," said Dr. Dena Al Thani, Associate Professor and Head of the Information and Computing Technology Division at QF's Hamad Bin Khalifa University's College of Science and Engineering, who chairs QF's Autism Task Force. "It brings together health, education, innovation, compassion, and coordinated action to better support individuals with autism and their families," she added.
The QF Autism Strategy 2025-2035 reflects the nation's state-level autism support framework and the need for integrated, multidisciplinary action to tackle autism that reaches across different sectors. It underscores the importance to national development of an inclusive society where everyone can thrive, and the way in which, through its unique ecosystem, QF is ideally placed to drive meaningful social change in the sphere of autism.
For his part, Dr. Hilal Lashuel, Research, Development and Innovation Advisor to the Chairperson of Qatar Foundation and QF's Executive Director of RDI, said: "Every autism journey is unique, and so our response must be too." He added, "This strategy reimagines autism support as a lifelong, personalized partnership that grows with each individual and responds to their evolving needs, from early diagnosis to adulthood."
Dr. Lashuel continued, "It fosters dignity, independence, and opportunity through early diagnosis, inclusive education, accessible care, research, and innovative technologies that empower individuals and families at every stage of life. And it reflects QF's vision that no individual with autism will be left behind, not in healthcare, not in education, not in employment, and not in the story of innovation shaping the future of Qatar."