Professor Anna Ranta

Research

Professor Ranta is an academic stroke neurologist who is passionate about improving stroke care for people in Aotearoa and globally.

Her current research focuses on translational stroke research to optimize stroke care quality and access, with a strong emphasis on addressing health inequities, especially for rural, Māori and Pacific populations.

Anna has led several large stroke research programmes and collaborates widely with others across Aotearoa, Australia, and globally resulting in 200+ peer reviewed journal articles and conference abstracts. She was born in Germany, trained at the University of Virginia, United States, and has lived with her husband and two daughters in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2007.

In addition to her role as Head of Department of Medicine, University of Otago, Wellington, she also leads the New Zealand National Stroke Registry and Stroke Strategy, co-directs the New Zealand National Hyper-Acute Stroke Programme, is the immediate past President of the Neurological Association of New Zealand, the current Secretary of Stroke Society of Australasia, Board Member of the World Stroke Organization, Board Member of the New Zealand Stroke Foundation, and serves on the editorial boards of Stroke, Neurology, and the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Anna is passionate about teaching and mentoring and always interested in hearing from postgraduate candidates. Some of her current areas of research:

• Principal Investigator (PI) for a pragmatic community-based cluster randomized clinical trial (RCT) assessing telestroke inside the ambulance now in establishment phase.
• Co-PI for Reducing Ethnic and Geographic Inequity to Optimise New Zealand Stroke Care – Part II – co-designing stroke care improvement strategies with rural Māori whānau and front-line clinicians to improve stroke outcomes for rural Māori.
• Tenecteplase for acute ischaemic stroke – PI for Central NZ Study Group and one of the lead contributors to the international CERTAIN collaboration.
• Co-PI for Auckland Regional Community Stroke (V) Incidence Study – Project 3: Modelling stroke incidence across Aotearoa through linking ARCOS V, IDI, and other data sources.
• PI for Climate Change and Stroke project exploring impact of Climate Change and also Greenspaces on Stroke incidence and outcomes.
• PI, Co-PI for the B-SAFE study, an HRC funded research project testing the impact of an atrial fibrillation primary care electronic decision support tool.
• Co-PI for Reducing Ethnic and Geographic Inequity to Optimise New Zealand Stroke Care (REGIONS Care study) – Part 1.
• PI for the FASTEST trial, an RCT assessing impact of a TIA electronic decision support tool for GPs that was found to significantly reduce stroke and other vascular events.