Dr. Courtney Howard, MD

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18 Questions with Courtney Howard

“This month we are featuring in our eco-maven section an inspiring and fearless ER doctor from Canada, Dr. Courtney Howard, who is not only at the frontline attending patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and took the time to answer our questions, but she has also found time in her life to advocate for planetary health, and even lead the Lancet Countdown report – in the Canadian Policy brief- with recommendations for a healthy response to climate change. “

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THE HILL : “Climate change and the toll it takes on our mental health”

“There’s a moment when the diagnosis of climate change and what it means for health really lands. For me, it happened in 2012 as I read an article that made clear that we need to leave the vast majority of economic fossil fuel reserves in the ground or risk an unlivable world within the lifetime of today’s children. I finished the article curled up in the fetal position around my eight-month-old daughter. For months afterwards my first thought upon awakening was of how her prospects for the future had changed. I had trouble concentrating, and every new data point in terms of temperature predictions was a punch to the gut.”

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EM OTTAWA : “System Change is Needed to Combat Climate Change”

“Increasing awareness of the urgency of climate change, led by the youth climate movement, and growing felt impacts of the health effects of climate change, including the devastating bushfires in Australia, are fuelling a global increase in interest in the concepts of “eco-anxiety” and “ecological grief.” How to cope with these emotions personally, and how to help our patients? “

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Climate change puts health at risk and economists have the right prescription

Doctors and economists may seem like strange partners. We spend our days working on very different problems in very different settings. But climate change has injected a common and urgent vocabulary into our work. We find ourselves agreeing both about the nature of the problem and the best solution. It’s essential that we put a price on carbon pollution.

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Post-COP24 Interview with Steve Paiken on the Agenda

On my way home from COP24 in Poland I stopped by the Agenda studio to talk LancetCountdown 2018 and about how discussing climate change as what it is—a health issue, can help to get us all pulling in the same direction towards a healthy response.

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Dr. Courtney Howard’s advice for fighting climate change with health research

“Dr. Courtney Howard – an Emergency Room Physician in Yellowknife, NT and primary author on the Lancet Countdown 2017 Report: Briefing for Canadian Policymakers– joined the Women’s Health Institute to present at the Third Annual Women’s Health Research Symposium on May 9th, 2018. Her talk, Climate change and women’s health in the North, and breakout session on climate change were focused on opportunities to improve women’s health outcomes while fighting climate change.”