Research interests
Background:
Dr. Maureen Miller has faculty appointments in the Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Department of Medicine (Infectious Diseases). She is an epidemiologist with training in anthropology and received her degrees from Columbia University. Dr. Miller has been engaged in HIV related research for more than 10 years. Her broader research has focused on the environmental, network, and behavioral factors associated with the transmission of infectious pathogens among drug using populations. Her recent publications include a critical review of the literature that examines the multiple causal levels that may increase women's risk of acquiring HIV, and an article examining sexual behavior changes after the initiation of protease inhibitor therapy to delay progression to AIDS.
Currently, Dr. Miller is the Principal Investigator of a large-scale, longitudinal study examining infectious disease transmission risk among African American women who use drugs, their sex partners and other individuals with whom the women use drugs (i.e., their risk network members).
For more information about this study, log on to www.bedstuywest.org.
She is a Co-Investigator on a study of non-injecting heroin users that examines transitions to injection and seroconversions to HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B, and another that examines linkages among drug use risk practices, prevalent or incident viral infection and social network characteristics in a population of recently initiated injecting drug users; these studies are based at the National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI). Dr. Miller is also involved in the continuing evaluation of the Oslo syringe exchange program in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health in Norway. Finally, Dr. Miller is involved in several studies currently being conducted in the Department of Medicine that link molecular biology, individual, and social network level data collected from drug using populations in an effort to better understand disease transmission dynamics. In the past, she has been involved with research conducted at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center, and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in France.
Dr. Miller developed and teaches two courses as part of the Infectious Disease epidemiology concentration in the department: Methods in Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Design of Infectious Disease Studies. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of her work, Dr. Miller mentors numerous Columbia graduate students from the Epidemiology Department, the School of Medicine, the Sociology Department and the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. Finally, Dr. Miller is a member of the Diversity Committee in the Department of Epidemiology. She is committed to the training and advancement of members of communities who may contribute to a further diversification of ideas.
