Staff Bio
John Howard, MD, MPH, JD, LLM, MBA, serves as the Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.
Role at CDC
Dr. Howard oversees NIOSH's research activities focused on the study of worker safety and health and moving that research into practice to help empower employers and workers to create safe and healthy workplaces.
He is also the Administrator of the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program, where he leads a federal health care program that provides high-quality, compassionate medical monitoring and treatment for WTC-related conditions to those directly affected by the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Previous experience
Dr. Howard served as Director of NIOSH from 2002 through 2008, and again from 2009 to 2015. He was re-appointed to a third six-year term in 2015 and a fourth six-year term in 2021.
Prior to his appointment as Director of NIOSH, Dr. Howard served as Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health in the California Department of Industrial Relations, Labor and Workforce Development Agency, from 1991 through 2002.
Education
Dr. Howard received his Doctor of Medicine from Loyola University of Chicago, his Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, his Doctor of Law from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his Master of Law in Administrative Law and his Master of Business Administration in Healthcare Management from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Howard is board-certified in internal medicine and occupational medicine. He is admitted to the practice of medicine and law in the State of California and in the District of Columbia, and he is a member U.S. Supreme Court bar. He has written numerous articles on occupational health law and policy and serves as a professorial lecturer in environmental and occupational health in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.