Donna E. Howard

For the past 30 years, Donna Howard's work has centered broadly on community-based empowerment efforts, principally among minoritized and poor populations. Moreover, for the past 20 years, she has focused on adolescent risk and protective behaviors, particularly interpersonal and intimate partner violence.

Howard has expertise in qualitative methods and leadership experience with developing, implementing, analyzing and publishing qualitative research addressing various domains of community violence (i.e., interpersonal, dating and sexual violence) and their psychosocial correlates.

As PI of both NICHD and University of Maryland  School of Public Health-funded research on dating relationships among high school females and males, Howard has laid the groundwork for ongoing research. She has developed strong community relations and garnered a reputation for trustworthiness and effectiveness in the timely completion of project goals. 

Howard has experience conducting sensitive research with underage and under-served populations, including obtaining support and consent from parents, youth and school personnel and maintaining confidentiality. Furthermore, she has assembled an excellent transdisciplinary team of collaborators with expertise and extensive experience investigating developmental trajectories of youth, adolescent risk behavior and intimate partner violence.

Additionally, Howard is engaged in on-going academic and professional activities within a global context. During her sabbatical year from the University of Maryland School of Public Health (academic year 2008-9), she spent 4.5 months in India as a Fulbright-Pai Visiting Lecturer at Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

Howard's life, both personally and professionally, has been forever changed by her Fulbright Fellowship in India. The transformation is based more on the cumulative exposures and experiences rather than by a singular event. She feels a renewed commitment to work for tolerance, peace and social justice. The Fulbright program has catalyzed this spark and India has burnished the inward light that will continue to inspire her.

When Howard returned to the U.S. and UMCP, she developed a winter study abroad program. This program, East Meets West: Contrasting Public Health Priorities, Pragmatics and Polemics in the US and India, has become a yearly tradition, beginning with its inception in 2010. The focus is on understanding the organization and practice of public health within an Indian context and highlighting strengths that are transferable to a U.S context.

She was also involved in a five-year (2014-2019) randomized community trial evaluating the impact of Galli Galli Sim Sim (the Indian version of Sesame Street) on the literacy, numeracy, health and socioemotional development of preschool children in India.

Howard continues to serve on the SPH Global Health Advisory Committee and the UMCP Fulbright Review Panel.