ANDREW HOWARD

andrew howard bio

About Dr. Andrew Howard

Dr. Howard is an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children and a Senior Scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences at the Research Institute. His clinical interests focus on complex orthopedic trauma and surgery for spinal and lower extremity deformities.

Efforts Abroad

Dr. Andrew Howard is the Director of the Office of International Surgery at the University of Toronto and the Chair of the Canadian Network for International Surgery. He has jointly organized and hosted the Bethune Round Table on International Surgery meetings in Toronto; a valuable symposium in which surgeons, academics, NGOs, health professionals and government leaders have collaborated to exchange ideas and develop integrated solutions for surgical care initiatives. Dr. Howard is also a member of the COSECSA: College of Surgeons in East, Central, and Southern Africa, which implements post-graduate surgical education and provides standardized surgical training throughout these regions.

Dr. Howard is the co-director of the Ptolemy Project; a partnership between U of T, COSECA, CIHR, and the Association of Surgeons of East Asia that provides surgeons in these countries to access U of T’s medical electronic library. This allows healthcare professionals in low-income countries to share textbooks, journals, and other academic material in order to develop their own academic and clinical capacity. The Project also provides an online course and tutorials to help potential candidates pass College exams certified through COSECSA. He has made numerous trips to Africa to host the COSECA examinations and provide student training.

In addition, Dr. Howard’s research focuses on the prevention and treatment of unintentional injury to children in low-income countries, which he has also been able to study first-hand during his missions to Africa. Orthopedic surgical care in Africa is a severe, though lesser-known, problem: 13% of Africans die from trauma, and 1 in 13 women die in childbirth. With only 400 surgeons in all of East Africa, the development of surgical service is overwhelmingly urgent. Dr. Howard has been travelling to Ethiopia’s Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa to provide support for clinical training and strengthen the capacity of health service delivery. These missions are implemented under the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration; a relationship that began under Clare Pain and the Department of Psychiatry.