[4] Powell has served on a number of committees for the Institute of Medicine, especially focusing on ethical issues in the management of public health disasters.
[5] She worked with the Institute of Medicine on 5 separate projects related to public health disasters, including as co-chair of the IOM report on antibiotics for anthrax attack.
[8] With Guthrie S. Birkhead, Powell co-chaired a 2007 workgroup that developed draft guidelines for New York State for the allocation of ventilators in the event of an influenza pandemic.
[13][8] In 2019, Powell published Dementia Reimagined: Building a Life of Joy and Dignity from Beginning to End through Penguin Random House.
[15] One of the historical figures she discusses is Solomon Fuller, a black doctor whose research at the turn of the twentieth century anticipated important aspects of current medical knowledge about dementia.