Ailsa Rutter OBE

Director

Fresh and Balance

Biography

Ailsa originally trained as a nurse and has worked in tobacco control since 1998. Her early work included heading up the Queensland Quit Campaign in Australia, managing Gateshead and South Tyneside NHS Stop Smoking Service and being Regional Tobacco Policy Manager for the North East. In 2005 Ailsa working with others launched Fresh the UK’s first regional tobacco control programme and has been its Director ever since. In 2014 Ailsa was awarded a World No Tobacco Day Medal by the WHO, an OBE in the New Year’s Honours 2017 for ‘services to tobacco control’. She is passionate about this work, having prematurely lost her father and auntie to COPD. She has also been closely involved in the running of Balance, the North East alcohol programme launched in 2009 in April 2021 became Director of Fresh and Balance, and is proud of the brilliant dedicated small team who work with so many committed partners.