Greg Miller
Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology
IPR Fellow | Co-Director of the Foundations of Health Research Center
PhD, Clinical Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1998
Psychologist Greg Miller's research focuses on early-life stressors related to poverty, and how they reverberate across the lifespan to influence disease risks. To study issues like this, his lab brings together theories and methods from across the behavioral and biomedical sciences. His long-term goal is to establish a behaviorally and biologically plausible understanding of how socioeconomic conditions affect children’s health and to leverage this knowledge to improve practices and policies aimed at mitigating health disparities.
Miller has received a number of honors and awards for his research, including the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Behavioral Medicine, Herbert Weiner Early Career Award from the American Psychosomatic Society, and Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Health Psychology from the American Psychological Association. In 2016 and 2018, he was named a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics, a designation for authors whose article citation rates were in top 1% of their field. In 2025 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Miller's research has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He was president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research from 2015–16.
Miller completed a clinical internship at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship in health psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining Northwestern, he was a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis from 2000 to 2003 and at the University of British Columbia from 2003 to 2012.
Current Research
Foundations of Health Research Center. Low socioeconomic status (SES) has consistently been linked to poor physical health outcomes for both children and adults—they are two times more likely to be hospitalized, 1.8 times more likely to be in poor health, and 1.5 times more likely to die than their higher-SES peers. These are not just an effect of poverty: Even as SES increases, the prevalence of poor health outcomes persists. A team led by Edith Chen and Greg Miller are investigating the relationship between SES and health effects. To this end, Chen and Miller established the Foundations of Health Research Center to explore the relationship between social factors and physical health across the life span for children and adults. Using long-term observational studies, they study psychosocial and biological pathways, like family relationships and the immune system, that link the social world to disease outcomes in the context of lung and heart disease. In randomized trials, they examine whether policy changes (unconditional cash transfers) and social interventions (mentoring relationships) can improve the health of youth from low-income communities.
Selected Publications
Nusslock, R., L. Alloy, G. Brody, and G. Miller. Annual research review: Neuroimmune network model of depression: A developmental perspective. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 65(4): 538–67.
Heard-Garris, N., T. Yu, G. Brody, E. Chen, K. Ehrlich, and G. Miller. 2024. Racial discrimination and metabolic syndrome in young Black adults. JAMA Network Open 7(4): E245388.
Warner, B., B. Rosa, I. Ndao, P. Tarr, J. Miller, S. England, J. Luby, C. Rogers, C. Hall-Moore, R. Bryant, J. Wang, L. Linneman, T. Smyser, C. Smyser, D. Barch, G. Miller, E. Chen, J. Martin, and M. Mitreva. 2023. Social and psychological adversity are associated with distinct mother and infant gut microbiome variations. Nature Communications 14(1): 5824.
Chen, E., G. Brody, and G. Miller. 2022. What are the health consequences of upward mobility? Annual Review of Psychology 73: 599–628.
Freedman, A., A. Papachristos, B. Smart, L. Keenan-Devlin, S. Khan, A. Borders, K. Kershaw, and G. Miller. 2022. Complaints about excessive use of police force in women’s neighborhoods and perinatal and cardiovascular health. Science Advances 8(3): eabl5417.
Miller, G., S. White, E. Chen, and R. Nusslock. 2021. Among children living in poverty, inflammatory activity is associated with larger neural responses to threat and reward. The American Journal of Psychiatry 178(4): 313–20.
Levine, C., H. Markus, M. Austin, E. Chen, and G. Miller. 2019. Students of color show health advantages when they attend schools that emphasize the value of diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(13): 6013–18.
Chiang, J., E. Chen, and G. Miller. 2018. Midlife self-reported social support as a buffer against premature mortality risks associated with abuse during childhood. Nature Human Behaviour 2: 261–68.
Miller, G., E. Chen, C. Armstrong, A. Carroll, S. Ozturk, K. Rydland, G. Brody, T. Parrish, and R. Nusslock. 2018. Functional connectivity in central executive network protects children against cardiometabolic risks linked with neighborhood violence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(47): 12063–68.
