Howard R. Schwartz, NRP, CP-C, is a nationally registered paramedic and a board certified community paramedic with 38 years of experience. He has worked in hospital-based, nonprofit, and municipal EMS systems. Along with serving as a paramedic in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he worked as a flight paramedic in Arizona on both rotor and fixed-wing aircraft. While in Arizona, he was a regionalcoordinator/program manager for the Arizona Department of Health Bureau of EMS, where he worked with many of the state’s EMS training programs and hospitals.

In 2003, he and his wife Joan returned to Pennsylvania, where he spent many years servicing the community where he grew up and his EMS career began. After volunteering as a board member for a local nonprofit EMS agency, in 2023 he became operations director for Northern Valley EMS near Allentown, Pennsylvania. Schwartz’s diverse career has provided him with experience and insight into many different aspects of EMS. He has been a member of NAEMT and served on the Membership Committee for many years and has been a frequent participant at EMS On The Hill Day. He has also been asked to testify many times in front of state and federal elected officials regarding a variety of EMS issues. After participating in his first National EMS Memorial Bike Ride more than 15 years ago, he became an avid long-distance cyclist. In 2016, he was part of a group that organized Pennsylvania’s first annual EMS Memorial Bike Ride. Since then, he has been instrumental in planning each year’s ride, which culminate at the state capital with the annual EMS Memorial Service.