
Alta (Aletta E.) Schutte PhD FESC FRRSAf ISHF is SHARP Professor and Principal Theme Lead of Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at UNSW Sydney, Australia; with a joint appointment as Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She has extensive experience in working in population-based studies with a focus on raised blood pressure, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
She has extensive experience in working in the field of hypertension and cardiovascular disease within Africa, but also as part of global projects. She has been the Chief Investigator of several multidisciplinary studies (POWIRS, SAfrEIC, African-PREDICT, co-PI of the South African leg of the PURE study), published ~400 papers in the field of blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, and supervised over 85 postgraduate students. She is involved in numerous international consortia, such as the Global Burden of Disease study (Washington DC), the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (London), May Measurement Month initiative of the International Society of Hypertension, IDACO/IDCARS studies (Belgium), and was one of 20 authors to join the Lancet Commission of Hypertension. She is the senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines.
She has been acknowledged for her work as winner of the Distinguished Woman Scientist in the Natural, Engineering and Life Sciences award, presented by the 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, and the 2019 African Union Kwame Nkrumah Regional Award for Scientific Excellence.
She serves as Associate Editor of Hypertension, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Hypertension Research and Global health and is on the Editorial Board of cardiovascular journals, such as the Journal of Hypertension, Journal of Clinical Hypertension, Journal of Human Hypertension, Current Hypertension Reports and BMC Medicine. She is a Board Member of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, the International Society of Hypertension and the Royal Society of South Africa; the Past President of the Southern African Hypertension Society (SAHS); and Immediate Past President of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH).
I have a research focus on reducing blood pressure globally. Raised blood pressure is the leading modifiable risk factor for preventable death, and despite highly effective and affordable medication available, the majority of the global population with raised blood pressure remains:
I am therefore involved in several programs globally to improve: