About Dr. Courtney Howard

Dr. Howard completed her medical degree and family medicine training at the University of British Columbia before pursuing Emergency Medicine training at McGill University. Work with Médecins Sans Frontières on a pediatric malnutrition project in Djibouti, and fifteen years serving a majority-Indigenous community in the North have led to a strong focus on understanding how societies and systems can change in a way that decreases inequities and gives everyone a chance to thrive. She later completed a Master of Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, where she focused on transitions toward economies centered on long-term wellbeing. Her multidisciplinary background also includes a BSc in Kinesiology with an extended minor in Dance from Simon Fraser University, a certificate in Leading Change from Harvard University, and creative writing studies through Humber College.

Working simultaneously at clinical, local, national, and international levels offers a unique perspective. Dr. Howard rides her bike to work in an emergency department in a part of the world warming at roughly triple the global rate. She has cared for patients struggling to breathe through wildfire smoke while helping catalyze national and international policy responses aimed at building healthier, more resilient futures.

This movement between scales—from bedside to policy, from local hospital systems to international governance spaces and back again—has shaped her understanding of the world as a complex adaptive system. It has also reinforced her belief that culture, policy, infrastructure, and human wellbeing are deeply interconnected, and that meaningful societal transitions become possible when enough people begin moving in the same direction. Her work increasingly focuses on how wellbeing can be built from the inside out—at individual, organizational, community, and national levels—and on the positive feedback loops that emerge when healthier systems help people thrive, and thriving people in turn help build healthier systems.

Dr. Howard served as the 2018 International Policy Director for the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change and continues to help lead its work in Canada. She sits on the Editorial Advisory Boards of The Lancet Planetary Health and the Journal of Climate Change and Health. In 2024, she led development of the Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Healthcare Education, which was unanimously adopted by Canada’s medical school deans. She is currently co-leading a white paper with Senator Rosa Galvez exploring next steps toward a society organized around long-term wellbeing in Canada.

Her research and advocacy work has spanned wildfire health impacts, menstrual cup adoption, healthcare adaptation, ecoanxiety, healthcare decarbonization, active transportation, fossil fuel divestment, coal phase-out, vaccine equity, plant-rich diets, and the downstream health impacts of fossil fuel development. She also helped lead successful efforts for Canada to join the WHO Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health and for the Canadian Medical Association to divest from fossil fuels.

Dr. Howard frequently speaks internationally on health, climate, resilience, and societal wellbeing. Her TEDx talk, Healthy Planet, Healthy People, continues to inform keynote and public engagement work exploring how societies can navigate instability while building healthier and more connected futures.

Her work has been recognized with the Canadian College of Family Physicians Environmental Leadership Award, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Advocacy Award, the CAPE Nicole Bruinsma Award, and the Mimi Divinsky Award for Narrative Medicine. She was named to the Maclean’s Power List in 2024, received a King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025 for her work in planetary health, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2026.