Professor Sharon Hutchinson
Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health
School of Health and Life Sciences
Sharon Hutchinson is a Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Glasgow Caledonian University and Consultant Scientist at Public Health Scotland. She graduated from the University of Oxford with a MSc in Applied Statistics and thereafter from the University of Glasgow with a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health. She is a Chartered Statistician with the Royal Statistical Society and Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health.
She has over 25 years experience in conducting epidemiological research informing the design and impact of public health interventions. Authoring over 250 publications, she leads a broad transnational research programme on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses with particular focus on people who inject drugs. Her research provided the key evidence to guide a public health response to hepatitis C in Scotland, which culminated in Scottish Government investing significantly in their Action Plan. The evidenced-based National Plan was the stimulus for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Hepatitis Alliance staging their inaugural World Hepatitis Summit in Glasgow in 2015. She has since co-authored Scotland’s Hepatitis C Elimination Strategy and currently co-chairs the Hepatitis C Elimination Strategy Implementation Group as part of the Scottish Health Protection Network. She also recently co-authored Scotland’s HIV Transmission Elimination Proposal published by Scottish Government in December 2022. With GCU Professor Claudia Estcourt, she co-leads Beyond BBV, a collaborative research programme which aims to deliver evidence to support Scottish Government’s strategies and ambition for Scotland to become the first country in the world to eliminate HIV transmission and hepatitis C as a major public health concern.
Since 2017, she has been the principal investigator on Scotland’s Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI), an internationally recognised bio-behavioural survey of people who inject drugs which has provided key data to support NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s public health response to an outbreak of HIV and inform Scotland’s progress on hepatitis C elimination. With UK collaborators, she co-leads a £3 million NIHR applied programme grant to evaluate the population impact of hepatitis C treatment as prevention for people who inject drugs (EPIToPe ).
Internationally, she is an expert advisor to the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), previously leading reviews of the evidence for Global guidance on the screening, care and treatment of hepatitis C infection and European guidance on the prevention of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs. She is a member of the Technical Advisory Group for the Hepatitis C Elimination Program of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, and supported the Viral Hepatitis Forum for the 2018 World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH). Since 2018, she has been a Commissioner for the Lancet co-authoring the EASL-Lancet Liver Commission on protecting the next generation of Europeans against liver disease complications and premature mortality. In 2022, she was co-convenor for the 10th International Conference on Health and Hepatitis Care in Substance Users, hosting a Policy Day on the important role of drug consumption facilities. In 2023, she was invited to become an advisor to the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), an international expert group on viral hepatitis.
In 2023, she received a CBE for services to public health research.