Board Certified Sexologist and Mind-Body Health Facilitator
Heather Howard, MBA, PhD, ACS is a board certified sexologist and mind-body health facilitator. She is trained in the science of sexuality as well as mind-body integrative techniques, and uses her unique expertise to help clients cope and prosper in often-neglected facets of their lives such as intimacy, pleasure and body acceptance and appreciation. Clients accomplish this through education and learning skills to access the wisdom of their bodies and live in the present moment.
Specialties
Dr. Howard has a pelvic pain condition and is one of the few experts in sexuality and pelvic pain. She sees sexuality as a conduit for healing and helps clients to infuse their lives with pleasure and intimacy even in the midst of their struggles with emotional and physical pain.
Typical clients include people looking to get on track with their intimate relationships; people needing help adjusting to life or health transitions such as pregnancy, parenthood, menopause, and limited mobility; and people who need help defining and enjoying sexuality and intimacy while facing challenges such as shame, addiction, disability, chronic pain, stress, trauma, body dissociation and assisted reproduction.
Experience
Dr. Howard is a board certified clinical sexologist and founder of the Center for Sexual Health and Rehabilitation. In addition to her private practice work, she serves as an associate professor of clinical sexology at The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS) in San Francisco; a clinical skills instructor for Herman & Wallace Pelvic Rehabilitation Institute; a clinical skills instructor in the OSCE Program for the Stanford School of Medicine Obstetrics & Gynecology Department; and a gynecological teaching associate at Stanford, Tauro and UCSF medical schools through Project Prepare, where she teaches medical students to perform comfortable and effective breast and pelvic exams. She also offers classes and workshops for individuals and couples seeking sexual enrichment, support, and/ or pain management, as well as educational programs to provide health care providers with tools to support the sexual challenges their clients face. She enjoys offering pleasure education workshops for private groups and is available for public speaking engagements.
She served on the Sexual Counselors and Therapists U.S. Advisory Board for Boehringer IngelheimPharmaceuticals, Inc. in relation to Flibanserin, a drug developed for female sexual desire, and is a reviewer for the 2012 Chronic Pelvic Pain Guidelines by the European Associationof Urology.
She received her BA from the University of California at Berkeley (1993), her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business (1995), and her PhD in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS) (2008). She also earned certificates in sex education and clinical sexology from IASHS and is board certified by the American College of Sexologists (ACS).
She has a certificatein the Science of Small Clinical Trials for the FDA Office of Orphan Products Development & NIHOffice of Rare Diseases Research and trained in a consciousness technique called Voice Dialo
