Aletta E. Schutte

Alta (Aletta E.) Schutte is a SHARP (Strategic Hires) Professor and Principal Theme Lead of Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, with a joint appointment as Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She is Honorary Professor at the North-West University and University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She has extensive experience in working in the field of raised blood pressure and hypertension in Africa, but also in Australia and as part of global projects. She has been the Chief Investigator of several multidisciplinary studies (African-PREDICT, co-PI of the South African leg of the PURE study). She is leading several clinical trials in Australia, South Africa and globally to improve hypertension management (e.g. the SALT Trial (Soweto, South Africa), the NEXTGEN BP trial (Australia) and Shop-to-Stop Hypertension trial (NSW, Australia)). She is also involved in international consortia, such as the Global Burden of Disease study, the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, a Trustee of the May Measurement Month global blood pressure screening campaign of the International Society of Hypertension, and Management Member of the Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium. Alta has published >500 scientific papers in the field of blood pressure and supervised over 85 postgraduate students. She is one of 20 invited authors of the Lancet Commission of Hypertension, senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines, and invited author of the 2023 World Health Organization Global Report on Hypertension. She has been acknowledged for her work as winner of research awards, including the Distinguished Woman Scientist in the Natural, Engineering and Life Sciences award (South African Department of Science and Technology); the NSTF South 32 TW Kambule Award; the British Association Medal from the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science, the Meiring Naude Medal from the Royal Society of South Africa, the AU-TWAS (African Union & The World Academy of Sciences) Award, 2019 African Union Kwame Nkrumah Regional Award for Scientific Excellence, 2020 KIFRA award in Science, and 2022 Harriet Dustan Award of the American Heart Association, and the 2023 Peter Sleight Excellence Award in Hypertension Clinical Research from the World Hypertension League. She serves as Associate Editor of Hypertension, and on the Editorial Board of the leading hypertension journals. She is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, the Royal Society of South Africa, and the International Society of Hypertension. Alta is the Past President of the Southern African Hypertension Society (SAHS); Secretary of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance (ACvA) and Past President of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH). She is the Co-Chair of the National Hypertension Taskforce of Australia.