Prof. Neil Poulter

Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine

Imperial College London

London, United Kingdom

Professor Neil Poulter qualified at St Mary’s Hospital, London, in 1974, following which he trained in General Medicine. He then spent 5 years in Kenya co-ordinating a collaborative hypertension research programme at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in Nairobi.

On his return to the UK in 1985 he gained an MSc in Epidemiology with distinction at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  Following this he was Co-PI of the WHO Oral Contraceptive case-control Study at University College London Medical School.

In 1997 he was appointed Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College London, where he is currently co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health and Director of the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit. He is an Honorary Consultant Physician and Epidemiologist at the Peart-Rose (CVD Prevention) Clinic based at Hammersmith Hospital, London, where he is actively involved in the treatment of patients with hypertension and related problems. 

He was President of the British Hypertension Society from 2003-2005 and was the President of the International Society of Hypertension from 2016-2018. In 2008, he was elected as one of the Inaugural Senior Investigators of the NIHR and also elected as a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009.

He has contributed chapters to several major textbooks and published over 600 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals, including co-authoring several sets of national and international guidelines. Professor Poulter was identified as being among the top 1% most cited academics in clinical medicine in 2014 (Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher report) and among the top 0.1% most cited researcher between 2008-2018 (Web of Science Group Highly Cited Researcher 2019 and 2020 report).

He has played a senior management role in several international trials including the ASCOT, ADVANCE, EXSCEL, DEVOTE LEADER and CREOLE trials; other research activities include the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension and dyslipidaemia; the association between birth weight and various cardiovascular risk factors; the cardiovascular effects of exogenous oestrogen and progesterone; the prevention and aetiology of type 2 diabetes and abdominal aortic aneurism; and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease.  He is the Chief Investigator of the May Measurement Month, an annual global blood pressure screening campaign initiated by the International Society of Hypertension.

Prof Martin Magnussen

Professor in Cardiology

Department of Clinical Science

Lund University, Malmö, Sweden

Martin Magnussen is a Professor in Cardiology at the Department of Clinical Science, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden. He is a senior consultant in Cardiology at the Department of Cardiology, Skåne University Hospital; a Extraordinary Professor at the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa; and a clinical fellow at the Wallenberg Centre, Lund University.

Professor Ushotanefe Useh B.Sc. (Hons), LLB,(Bachelor of Laws)  M.Ed, PhD FHEA

The Director of Lifestyle Diseases Research Entity, Faculty of Health Sciences, North West University, MC, South Africa. His research focus is in Lifestyle Diseases risks and prevention with emphasis on advocacy, children, and rural African communities. He is also an educator and member of different professional organisations.  A registered physiotherapist with the Health Professions Councils of South Africa and the United Kingdom, an advocate of the high Court of South Africa and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (United Kingdom).

The tile for his presentation in this conference is : Use of laws in the prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in selected Low and Medium Income Countries: a case for rural communities.

Professor Hans Strijdom

Hans Strijdom is a clinician‐turned‐academic, and currently Professor and Head of the Division of Medical Physiology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Cardio‐metabolic Research in Africa at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His broader research focuses on the physiology and pathophysiology of the cardiovascular system, with a particular interest in vascular and endothelial biology. Whilst initially conducting mainly laboratory, cell, tissue and organ based research, he has since 2015 shifted his attention to clinical and epidemiological studies. In 2015 he was awarded funding via the ERAfrica programme (EU FP7) and became international project coordinator of the EndoAfrica study consortium that included researchers from Stellenbosch University, North‐West University and Walter Sisulu University in South Africa, as well as research groups from Austria and Belgium.

For the past number of years, he has published extensively on the interaction between HIV and cardiometabolic changes in people living with HIV. Hans, a C2‐rated scientist with the NRF, has published 52 peer‐reviewed articles and presented over 80 papers at national or international scientific meetings, including 12 as an invited speaker. He has supervised 17 doctoral candidates, 17 Masters candidates and hosted 6 post‐doctoral fellows. Apart from his research activities, Hans is a full‐time lecturer in undergraduate and postgraduate human physiology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University for the MBChB, BSc Physiotherapy, BSc Dietetics, B Nursing and B Occupational Therapy programmes. He has extensive curriculum design and implementation experience and has won several undergraduate teaching and general performance awards in his Faculty and University.

Professor Alta (AE) Schutte PhD FESC FRSSAf ISHF

Alta (Aletta E.) Schutte is a SHARP Professor and Principal Theme Lead of Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine at the University of New South Wales, with a joint appointment as Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She has an honorary appointment at the North-West University and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Professor Schutte has extensive experience in working in population-based studies with a focus on raised blood pressure, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. She has been the Chief Investigator of several multidisciplinary studies, 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, the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, May Measurement Month blood pressure screening initiative, and was one of 20 authors of the Lancet Commission of Hypertension. She is the senior author of the 2020 International Society of Hypertension Global Hypertension Guidelines.

Alta has been acknowledged for her work as winner of several distinguished awards, including the 2022 Harriet Dustan Award by the Hypertension Council of the American Heart Association. In South Africa she was winner of the Distinguished Woman Scientist in the Natural, Engineering and Life Sciences award, the NSTF South 32 TW Kambule Award; and the 2019 African Union Kwame Nkrumah Award for Scientific Excellence.

She serves as Associate Editor of Hypertension, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, and Hypertension Research and is on the Editorial Board of several cardiovascular journals, such as the Journal of Hypertension 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; and Immediate Past President of the International Society of Hypertension.

Prof. Makama Andries Monyeki

Professor Makama Andries Monyeki is a South African holding holding a PhD degree ‘titled: Health and physical fitness status of rural primary school children living in Ellisras, South Africa’ in Human Movement Sciences (Cum de eius in Medicina) from the Faculty of Medicine of the Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands’. He is a professor the School of Human Movement Sciences, and affiliate of PhASRec. He is an established NRF C rated researcher with over 1300 citations, and an award recipient: MRC-Silver Medal for an Emerging Scientist, 2014, Janssen-Cilag Award and a Certificate of a Young Researcher, 2003. Prof. Monyeki was appointed on a visiting professorship at the Physical Activity for Health Group, School of Psychological Sciences and Health University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland on a three-year period (2019 to 2021). He published over 110 peers reviewed articles, over 95 conference presentations in the areas, such as body composition (underweight/malnutrition, overweight/obesity), metabolic syndromes, physical activity. He supervised over 34 M and PhD students.

Professor Monyeki is the principal investigator of Physical Activity and Health Longitudinal Study (PAHLS, 2010 -2014), and Body Composition using stable Isotopes Techniques (BC–IT; IAEA funded) study; and a collaborator in ExAMIN YOUTH study. Additionally, he participated in the FLAG, PLAY, PURE and Obesity studies as a researcher. In 2012, prof Monyeki served as an expert advisor to the International Atomic Energy Agency on measures to be used to combat obesity in children.

He is a lead team member in the writing of Healthy Kids South Africa (HAKSA) Report Card about the health, nutritional and physical activity status of children aged 6 to 18 years (2012 to dated). In 2010, he participated in the drafting and adoption of Toronto Charter for Physical Activity: A Global Call on Action, by the International Society for Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH), Toronto, Canada. He participated in the drafting of the first National Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Obesity in South Africa (2015–2021). Recently (2021), he served as a member of the Review Panel of the same strategy and the development of a revised National Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Obesity Strategic in SA.

Prof. Cristian Ricci

Cristian Ricci is an associate professor at the Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research (AUTHeR) in the Faculty of Health Sciences of the North-West University, South Africa. He obtained his master’s degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Milan in 2000. After teaching in public and private high schools and working for private companies, he pursued a Ph.D. in Biostatistics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Milan.

He was responsible for the Clinical Epidemiologic department in the hospital San Donato and served as a consultant for the hospital Galeazzi in Milan from 2009 to 2012. He then served as the head of the Biostatistics unit at the Don Gnocchi Foundation at the Santa Maria Nascente Hospital for a year, after which he joined the department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine of the University of Regensburg (Germany) for the period 2013-2015. In 2015, he joined the Nutritional Methodology and Biostatistics Group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization in Lyon (France) as visiting scientist. During the period 2016-2019 he was a postdoc at the Centre of Excellence for Nutrition (CEN) of the North-West University in Potchefstroom (South Africa), where he was also involved as a scientist in the department of Statistics (Faculty of Natural sciences) and as statistician at the Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC). Thereafter he was appointed as a researcher in the department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Leipzig (Germany) from 2019 to 2021.

During his work experience, he applied biostatistics methods to many different fields of medicine and bioscience, and developed specific knowledge in multivariate space reduction techniques, statistical modelling, variable selection, power analysis, meta-analysis and meta-regression, non-parametric modelling and analysis, statistical methods for clinical trials and epidemiological studies (time-to-event analysis, competing risk analysis, multi-state modelling, etc.). During his scientific activity he published more than 150 papers in scientific peer reviewed journals and accumulated an H-index above 30.

Prof. Lisa Ware

Lisa Ware is an Associate Professor at the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development and an Associate Director of the MRC Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit (DPHRU), University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and she has a background in nutrition, physiology and health psychology (Southampton University, UK). Her research focuses on identification and modification of behavioural risk factors for hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD).She has led Wellcome Trust funded research investigating intergenerational transmission of CV risk within South African families. She currently runs a research platform in Soweto, evaluating the impact of health-focused youth employment interventions on the health of participating youth and the surrounding community (witshealthhubb.org).