Dr Howard worked in Djibouti for six months on a pediatric malnutrition project with Médecins Sans Frontières, and that experience drives much of her work on climate-related mitigation and adaptation. She has researched menstrual cups and wildfires, and led policy work and advocacy regarding ecoanxiety, vaccine equity, movement-building, active transport, plant-rich diets, fossil fuel divestment, carbon pricing, coal phase-out, hydraulic fracturing and with regards to Canada’s Oil Sands.

She led the 2017-2019 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Briefings for Canadian Policymakers and was the 2018 International Policy Director for the Lancet Countdown. Dr Howard was the first woman president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and sits on the boards of the Canadian Medical Association and the Global Climate and Health Alliance, is the co-chair for advocacy for the WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate Change and Health, as well as being on the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance, and the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Lancet Planetary Health and the Journal of Climate Change and Health.

When not in the ER or deep in a literature review, she can be found dancing with her two young daughters on the shores of Back Bay in Canada’s subarctic.