Laura Chow
Senior Planner, Healthy Environments & Climate Change, Vancouver Coastal Health

Laura Chow is a Senior Planner with Vancouver Coastal Health’s Healthy Environments & Climate Change team. The team works to bring forward optimize health benefits and reduce harms to the public resulting from the environment and the places where we live, learn, work in play.

The team addresses the upstream impacts of the physical and environmental determinants of health. This includes:

• Addressing the linkages between the planning and design of our environments to our physical, mental, and social well-being, and their contribution to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. community planning, transportation mode shift)
• Minimizing exposures due to environmental health hazards (e.g. air pollution, noise)
• Preparing for hazards related to climate change (e.g. heat, wildfire smoke, drinking water quality, drought)

Formally trained as an Environmental Health Officer, Laura has blended her public health experience with her Master’s of Community and Regional Planning from the University of British Columbia to bring a unique perspective to the world of planning. She uses a systems-level approach, challenging how we think about solving the inequitable impacts of climate change, transportation, and community planning.

In her free time, Laura enjoys reading and spending time in nature and with her family.