Researcher
Dr. Ted R. Miller is a distinguished expert in public health with over 55 years of experience in health and safety economics, epidemiology, planning, policy, and evaluation research. His research interests are broad and share a common element: making a positive difference in the world, empowering advocates, addressing inequities, and moving research to practice to improve the lives of current and future generations.
At Michigan State University, Dr. Miller co-leads the Data and Analytics Workstream for the National Center for Health and Justice Integration for Suicide Prevention (NCHATS). This innovative center, funded by a $15 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, aims to bridge data between criminal justice systems and healthcare to identify individuals at risk of suicide following legal contact and connect them to appropriate treatment. The Data and Analytics Workstream provides expertise in study design, health economics, and data governance to support the center's initiatives.
His economic analyses of health and safety interventions have significantly influenced national policy and provided guidance to federal agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Justice, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Miller is recognized both nationally and internationally for his work on the costs of injury and illness and the savings from prevention, as well as his contributions to abating the opioid crisis. His estimates on costs and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) associated with injury and violence have been utilized by various U.S. government agencies. His research has been published in numerous papers on injury and alcohol and other drug (AOD) issues in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
As a Principal Collaborator on the Global Burden of Disease initiative, Dr. Miller has accumulated more than 250,000 citations throughout his career. He has utilized his cost-effectiveness estimates to evaluate over 170 prevention and treatment measures. He has led more than 250 research studies and authored over 400 journal articles, as well as 70 books, chapters, reports to Congress, and papers in peer-reviewed proceedings. Notably, he has written more than 100 articles related to the Global Burden of Disease and Global Health Financing. According to Google Scholar, 395 of his publications (over 80%) have been cited at least 10 times.
Dr. Miller founded the Children's Safety Network Economics and Insurance Resource Center in 1992. This initiative fostered early collaborations between child safety advocates and the insurance industry, earning recognition with a Nationwide Insurance On Your Side Highway Safety Award. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine and has received the Donald F. Huelke Lifetime Membership Award for Excellence. Dr. Miller has also been honored with the Science Award and Distinguished Career Award from the American Public Health Association’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section.
Dr. Miller holds an adjunct appointment at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His international work includes evaluating preventive health programs in Belgium, Brazil, China, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where he oversaw the design and conduct of large household and school-based health surveys in nine languages. He has been an active member of the International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics since its inception in 1992.
Earlier in his career, as a federal employee and later at consulting firms, Dr. Miller analyzed a wide range of issues in health and nutrition, including clinical laboratory capability, food supplements for low-income populations, the economics of preventive health screening, home health programs, hemophilia programs, migrant health, maternal and child health, pollution, and water infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa. He then transitioned to the nonprofit sector, initially at The Urban Institute and later at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation from 1993 to 2025. There, his research concentrated on injury and violence, alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD), maternal and child health, and behavioral health.
Dr. Miller's academic training is deliberately interdisciplinary, with master’s degrees in operations research and city planning, as well as a PhD in regional science (spatial economics) from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation became the principal epidemiological and cost analysis supporting the adoption of the national voluntary blood donation system.
