Suellen Miller - UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Suellen Miller, PhD, RN, CNM, MHA

Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences
Director, Safe Motherhood Programs, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health
Adjunct Professor, Maternal Child Health Program, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Email: suellenmiller@gmail.com

Biosketch:

Dr. Miller is the Director of the Safe Motherhood Program at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Professor at UCSF. The Safe Motherhood Program comprises intervention projects and research on critical maternal health issues. Dr. Miller is Adjunct Professor of the Maternal and Child Health Program at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. Dr. Miller was the principal investigator on multiple studies of the Non-pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment (NASG) for the management of obstetric hemorrhage, in Nigeria, India, Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. These studies include comparative projects in hospitals in Egypt and Nigeria, and randomized cluster trails at midwife-staffed primary health care centers in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Recent media attention to this life-saving device include an article in the New York Times, an interview on ABC television, and multiple press articles in WIRED magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle. The NASG has been selected as one of UNICEF/USAID/Every Mother Counts/PATH’s Ten Breakthrough Innovations to Save Mother’s Lives in 2015

Professor Millis is also contributing investigator to Continuum of Care for Post Partum Hemorrhage Project, a multi-phase community-to-facility maternal health project in Nigeria and India on which she collaborates with the NGO, Pathfinder.She is also co-PI, along with PIs from University of Illinois, Chicago, KNM Medical College, Belgaum, India, and Gynuity Helath Projects, NY, on a health delivery systems study of two approaches for using misoprostol to prevent postpartum hemorrhage at home deliveries in rural India. She is PI on the newly funded NIH study, “Beyond Repair,” an innovation studly to develop a tool to measure reintegration among women with fistula repairs who return to their communities.

Dr. Miller’s expertise is called upon for international technical consultations by bi-lateral organizations, such as WHO and UNICEF. She is on the Expert Panel on Induction and Augmentation of Labor, the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative’s (CMQCC) Hemorrhage Task Force, the Prevention of Post Partum Hemorrhage Initiative’s (POPPHI) First Interventions Task Force, and the WHO Partnership for Safe Mothers’, Newborns’, and Children’s Health, Effective Interventions Working Group. She was on the Technical Advisory Board of "No Woman, No Cry," the global documentary on maternal mortality, released in early 2010. She sits on the Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health Committee of the International Federation of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FIGO), for whom she has recently co-authored guidelines on the management of second stage labor. She is currently FIGO representative to a collaborative between FIGO, ICM, WHO, and the White Ribbon Alliance on a global project, the “Mother Friendly Facility Initiative” which provides criteria for facilities to follow to protect the human rights and dignity of women during labor, childbirth, and post-partum.

She conducted the NIH-funded Randomized Control Trial of a Traditional Tibetan Medicine, Zhi Byed 11, vs. Misoprostol to prevent Postpartum Hemorrhage. Dr. Miller’s work in Tibet was not only the first RCT ever conducted there, but also included two years of ethnographic research and multiple publications, including some on the ethics of informed consent in research naïve populations.

Dr. Miller has published over 55 journal articles, including a paper she co-authored, with Dr. Vincanne Adams, UCSF Medical Anthropology, which won the Society of Medical Anthropology’s Polgar Prize (Challenge of Cross-Cultural Clinical Trials Research: Case Report from the Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 19 (3): 267-89). She is co-author of the Hesperian Foundation's Book for Midwives, which was awarded the American College of Nurse Midwives’ Notable Book of the Year Award in 2006. She has recently completed writing, directing, and narrating a new training video for Pathfinder International, "Saving Mother's Lives: Community and Clinical Action to Address Post-Partum Hemorrhage." A new web-based toolkit for policy makers, clinicians, and trainers was recently launched on the NASG website: www.lifewraps.org.

Areas of Interest:

Obstetric Hemorrhage
Evidence-Based Obstetrical Medicine
International Safe Motherhood

Ongoing Research Projects:

Title: UZ-UCSF Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) for HIV/AIDS Research

Key Funders: NIAID/NIH

Principal Investigator: Chirenje, MZ (Suellen Miller, Senior Advisor)

Title: Effectiveness of the ASG (Anti-Shock Garment) in Managing Obstetrical Hemorrhage: Zambia and Zimbabwe

Key Funders: NIH, NICHD, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation