Alta Schutte and Colleagues at National Hypertension Taskforce: Driving Single-Pill Therapy for Hypertension and More
Alta Schutte, Deputy President at Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, posted on LinkedIn:
“A very successful meeting of the National Hypertension Taskforce in Adelaide this week. Truly appreciate not only the presence and excellent presentation of our Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd, but particularly his reinforcement of our key priorities to substantially improve hypertension control in Australia. Thank you once again Garry Jennings (Heart Foundation), Lisa Murphy (Jacqui McCallum Stroke Foundation), Rob Tassie (Australian Cardiovascular Alliance) and of course my co-chair Markus Schlaich from Hypertension Australia for the consistent support.
The Key Priorities of the Taskforce demonstrated during this meeting:
- Implementing Single Pill Combination therapy for 80%+ of patients with hypertension
- Much better implementation of 60-day dispensing
- BOTH these initiatives will save patients significant amounts of money if we can implement it – while improving BP control while preventing more cardiovascular events, improving medication adherence, treatment inertia, and have no increase in side-effects. A no-brainer.
- Team-based care is definitely necessary if we want to make a difference
- Improving overall awareness of the risks of high blood pressure (leading cause of deaths in Australia from stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and dementia). Let’s make sure to detect hypertension in the 50% who are not aware.
Grateful to everyone for your presence and presentations:
- Dannii Dougherty on the 2026 Australian Hypertension Guidelines
- Ross Tsuyuki’s insights from the Canadian Guidelines
- Andrew Goodman’s leadership on the Taskforce’s recently established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group on Preventing, Detecting and Treating Hypertension more effectively
- James Sharman on the Taskforce’s 2025 Position Statement on Automated Office Blood Pressure Monitoring
- Kathy Trieu and Bruce Neal on the Taskforce’s 2025 Position Statement on Potassium-enriched Salt Substitutes
- Australian Cardiovascular Alliance’s Catherine Shang on the 2025 Cardiovascular Data Summit
- Niamh Chapman speaking on the MRFF Funded AUS HEARTS projects on improve BP control in rural regional and remote NSW.
- Ania Samarawickrama starting the discussion with Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s Chris Campbell, The Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s Monique Mackrill, Amanda Seeto, Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association (APNA) Kayley Meredith and Catherine Stephen on the huge importance of multidisciplinary team-based care to improve hypertension. And how key to have had Christine Rees from Heartbeat Victoria Council Inc. speaking about her lived experience on so many different people caring for her through her journey.
Grateful for the support from UNSW Medicine and Health, AstraZeneca (Alexsandra Hughes), Servier Australia (Gerarda Marriott, Dr. Maung Maung Oo), Novartis, Australia and New Zealand to make the day possible.”
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