Maureen Miller, PhD

Maureen Miller, PhD

New York, New York, United States
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About

My introduction to epidemiology was akin to love at first sight. I embraced the chance to…

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Activity

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Experience

Education

  • Columbia University Graphic

    Columbia University in the City of New York

    Activities and Societies: American Public Health Association member Editor, Journal of HIV/AIDS Surveillance and Epidemiology

  • Activities and Societies: Inducted Phi Beta Kappa. Graduated magna cum laude.

Licenses & Certifications

Volunteer Experience

Publications

Projects

  • Accion Contra el Hambre WaSH in Nut Evaluation

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    An NGO requested a post-hoc evaluation of an ongoing environmental intervention to determine impact, and to improve monitoring capabilities going forward. The Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali and Niger have some of the highest child mortality rates globally. The NGO wanted to know if there had been changes in child mortality in the four years since the program was implemented and, if so, could observed changes be due to the impact of a water, sanitation and hygiene initiative that had been…

    An NGO requested a post-hoc evaluation of an ongoing environmental intervention to determine impact, and to improve monitoring capabilities going forward. The Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali and Niger have some of the highest child mortality rates globally. The NGO wanted to know if there had been changes in child mortality in the four years since the program was implemented and, if so, could observed changes be due to the impact of a water, sanitation and hygiene initiative that had been integrated into pre-existing nutrition programs (WaSH in Nut). Available date were non-standardized government registries, hospital data, and ad hoc WaSH in Nut implementation data across the three countries. A basic standardized surveillance framework was developed and the evaluation successfully completed. Child mortality decreases were observed in all three Sahel countries over time, despite known external factors including a documented food crisis in Year 2 of program implementation. Easy to implement, iterative improvements to the surveillance framework were recommended and adopted by all three governments and the sponsoring NGO. Subsequently the NGO expanded the program within the Sahel and to other countries.

  • Fuerza Feminina (Girls' Leadership Through Sports)

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    Sometimes solutions to straightforward problems aren’t the most obvious strategies for success. More than 10 million young people aged 15-24 became newly infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) each year for the past decade. Still, no one wants to talk about sex. Develop a low-cost, accessible intervention strategy to decrease STI transmission risk that is acceptable to teens, parents, students and educators. Basically, create a program that addresses sex behaviors that doesn’t…

    Sometimes solutions to straightforward problems aren’t the most obvious strategies for success. More than 10 million young people aged 15-24 became newly infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) each year for the past decade. Still, no one wants to talk about sex. Develop a low-cost, accessible intervention strategy to decrease STI transmission risk that is acceptable to teens, parents, students and educators. Basically, create a program that addresses sex behaviors that doesn’t talk about sex. Using existing research, the entire teen ‘ecosystem’ was analyzed to identify activities and situations vulnerable to change that would also affect sex behaviors. The result was the development of an afterschool leadership through sport program for inner city girls that directly addressed the time frame (after school and before parents come home) in which most sex risk occurs. In addition to decreasing sex risk, the program also addresses childhood obesity, issues of low self-esteem, fitness, community building and leadership skills for girls.

  • Pandemic Threats Early Warning System

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    Since the 1970s when emerging infectious diseases like Ebola were first identified, global health experts have faced an intractable problem: by the time someone sick shows up at a hospital, an outbreak has already occurred. I was tasked to determine if it is possible to identify disease transmission at an earlier stage, before it becomes entrenched. In other words, can the public health community be proactive and prevent pandemics, rather than reactive to ‘surprise’ pandemics? Through the novel…

    Since the 1970s when emerging infectious diseases like Ebola were first identified, global health experts have faced an intractable problem: by the time someone sick shows up at a hospital, an outbreak has already occurred. I was tasked to determine if it is possible to identify disease transmission at an earlier stage, before it becomes entrenched. In other words, can the public health community be proactive and prevent pandemics, rather than reactive to ‘surprise’ pandemics? Through the novel use of existing technologies, I built a simple, flexible behavioral and biological surveillance system for global use to disrupt disease epidemics—like the current coronavirus—in real time, at their source. The ‘How to Guide’ to set up the system is published and promoted by the World Health Organization.

    See project

  • Reopening the Economy during a Pandemic

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    The COVID19 pandemic negatively disrupted the global economy in a way the world has never seen. Despite the gravity of the public health emergency, it is necessary—and possible—to navigate the waves and peaks of the pandemic over the next 12 to 18 months in a way that both protects the public and reopens the economy safely. A particular challenge, to US employers especially, is the lack of both sufficient data as to the extent and spread of the virus, and detailed federal guidelines that…

    The COVID19 pandemic negatively disrupted the global economy in a way the world has never seen. Despite the gravity of the public health emergency, it is necessary—and possible—to navigate the waves and peaks of the pandemic over the next 12 to 18 months in a way that both protects the public and reopens the economy safely. A particular challenge, to US employers especially, is the lack of both sufficient data as to the extent and spread of the virus, and detailed federal guidelines that provide specific actions and strategies employers should take in the face of the constantly changing health risks posed by the pandemic at the local level. Using established public health practice combined with available evidence from reopening experiences in other countries, we’ve developed techniques and strategies to help employers create nimble, responsive and safe work environments and arrangements.

  • The Global Fund Gender Equity/Human Rights Guidance

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    The project was about measuring the unmeasurable in the face of strong resistance. Women represent more than half of the HIV/AIDS cases in the world. The Global Fund to fight HIV, TB and Malaria had no mechanism to determine if programs were awarded funds commensurate with need. The challenge was to get applicants and recipients to identify and provide data on behaviors that increase risk, when they believe they have no tools or information. I developed applied guidance for gender health…

    The project was about measuring the unmeasurable in the face of strong resistance. Women represent more than half of the HIV/AIDS cases in the world. The Global Fund to fight HIV, TB and Malaria had no mechanism to determine if programs were awarded funds commensurate with need. The challenge was to get applicants and recipients to identify and provide data on behaviors that increase risk, when they believe they have no tools or information. I developed applied guidance for gender health equity/human rights assessments with implementation tools that included not only gender, but also sexual orientation, and behaviors that increase both the risk of disease and discrimination. Key to the guidance were examples of data sources and how these data and intelligence could be used to create a baseline to monitor equity. The guidance was adopted as policy. The standardized information remains systematically and regularly required of all grant applicants and recipients. Funding decisions now consider monitored advances in health equity.

    See project

Honors & Awards

  • Graduated magna cum laude

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  • Phi Beta Kappa

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Languages

  • Spanish

    Limited working proficiency

  • French

    Limited working proficiency

Organizations

  • American Public Health Association

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  • Columbia University Alumni Association

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  • Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres Association

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  • International Society for Infectious Diseases

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