Professor, Health Behavior & Health Education
Dr. Alison Miller is a developmental psychologist who studies child bio-behavioral regulation, family processes, and social contextual factors in relation to child health and mental health outcomes. Dr. Miller’s research focuses on basic developmental processes, including self-regulation of emotion, sleep, eating behavior, and neuroendocrine stress responses in young children. An overarching goal of her work is to apply findings from developmental science to foster positive child health and mental health outcomes. Dr. Miller works with children and families who are at risk for unhealthy outcomes for various reasons, including living with maternal incarceration; in poverty conditions; in high-violence neighborhoods; and in non-optima food environments. For many such projects, she collaborates with community partners ranging from grassroots community-based organizations, to Head Start programs, to school systems.
Obesity is a complex condition influenced by biological, psychological, behavioral and social contextual factors, many of which can be established and identified early in the lifespan. Recent attention has focused on the need for developmental science to inform the study of childhood obesity. Importantly, income related disparities in obesity are identifiable even in early childhood. Dr. Miller’s work in the Lumeng/Miller Lab brings together these interests across a series of studies. In collaboration with Dr. Julie Lumeng, their lab is housed at the Center for Human Growth and Development.
Dr. Miller supervises graduate and undergraduate students at the School of Public Health who are interested in nutrition sciences, food systems and sustainability.
