Dr. Courtney Howard is an emergency physician in Yellowknife's Dene territory, a clinical associate professor in the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, a community research fellow in planetary health at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, and a former president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). She is a 2022-2023 master of public policy candidate at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

Howard has researched menstrual cups and wildfires, and led policy work and advocacy regarding eco-anxiety, movement-building, active transport, plant-rich diets, divestment, carbon pricing, coal phaseout and hydraulic fracturing in the oilsands. 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.

As co-chair of advocacy for the WHO Civil Society Working Group on Climate Change and Health, Howard helped to launch a global healthy recovery initiative asking G20 leaders to focus on low-carbon investments —which gained the support of two-thirds of the world’s health-care professionals. She sits on the board of the Canadian Medical Association, and is vice-chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. She also serves 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 engaged in planetary health nerdiness, Howard can often be found with her two daughters, dancing on the shores of Great Slave Lake.