Michigan State University’s Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health has announced Ted R. Miller, PhD, has joined the department as a C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health, expanding the department’s expertise in trauma and injury prevention, public health, and substance use research.
Miller brings more than four decades of experience in public health, with a career focused on the epidemiology, cost, and prevention of road crashes, self-inflicted injury, violence, and substance use. He is a leading national and international expert on abating the opioid crisis. A Principal Collaborator in the Global Burden of Disease effort, he has more than a quarter million citations in his career. He joins MSU Public Health from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, where he served as a Principal Research Scientist.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Miller to the department,” said Jennifer Johnson, PhD, Chief Translation Officer in the Office of Health Sciences and Chair of the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health. “Dr. Miller’s work on assigning costs to opioid addiction, suicide, partner violence, and many other important societal issues and his ability to bridge rigorous data analysis with community-level application is exactly what we need as we continue building public health initiatives and research in Flint and beyond.”
The C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health is a prestigious faculty position within the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health on the Flint campus. It is supported through an endowment from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Miller’s appointment will be the seventh within the department since it was established. Endowed professors lead programs addressing social determinants of health, environmental justice, mental health, maternal/child health, and chronic disease, all anchored in community-participatory research models.
Miller has led more than 250 research studies and is the author of more than 400 journal articles. His economic analyses of health and safety interventions have shaped national policy and guided 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.
“I’m excited to join Michigan State University’s Flint-based public health department,” Miller said. “I’ve long admired MSU’s commitment to translating evidence into real-world impact directly into communities. I look forward to supporting the department’s work through data-driven research that can improve lives and reduce harms.”
Miller founded the Children’s Safety Network Economics and Insurance Resource Center in 1992 and continues to nurture it. The center helped forge early partnerships between child safety advocates and the insurance industry and was recognized with a Nationwide Insurance On Your Side Highway Safety Award.
Miller is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine and has received the Excellence in Science Award and Distinguished Career Award from the American Public Health Association’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section.
At MSU, Miller will continue to co-lead the Data and Analytics Workstream for the National Center for Health and Justice Integration for Suicide Prevention (NCHATS). NCHATS is a pioneering suicide‑prevention center funded by a $15 million National Institute of Mental Health grant that bridges data between criminal‑legal systems and health care to identify individuals at risk of suicide following legal contact and link them to treatment. The Data and Analytics Workstream offers expertise in study design, health economics, and data governance to support work across the Center.
Miller’s addition to MSU Public Health aligns with the department’s growing emphasis on research that combines health economics, implementation science, and community engagement. His expertise in estimating the costs and benefits of prevention programs is expected to strengthen efforts addressing the long-term effects of trauma, violence, and substance use disorders.
“Public health needs economists who understand both the numbers and the people behind them,” Johnson said. “Ted’s work exemplifies that synergy. He not only calculates the cost of trauma, violence, or addiction, but also conveys the value of prevention and healing.”
The Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health is part of MSU’s College of Human Medicine and works closely with local residents, health systems, and policy makers to improve health outcomes in historically underserved communities.
“Flint is a powerful place to do this work,” Miller said. “I’m honored to be part of a team that’s committed to understanding complex health challenges and also building lasting solutions.”
July 18, 2025
