Dr. Miller conducts developmentally informed behavioral research to examine the impact of parent-youth communication and decision making on health related behaviors and outcomes, in the context of chronic illness management and primary care. Overall, she aims to conduct research that facilitates youth involvement and empowerment in health-related decision making and enhances parent-youth-provider relationships.
Methodologically, she has significant experience with measure development, observational methods, and qualitative design and analysis.
One broad area of her research has focused on independent self-management of chronic illness, with a particular focus on the development of decision making autonomy and competence.
This line of research has underscored that the parent-youth relationship is an important context in which decision making independence and competence develop. One product of this work is the Decision Making Involvement Scale to measure how parents and children interact around decisions that need to be made. The second broad area of her research has focused on informed consent and assent in pediatric medical settings, with specific projects related to physician-parent-patient communication, parental decision making control, and children's and adolescents' roles in decision making. In a new line of work, Dr. Miller is developing and evaluating a primary care-based intervention to promote parent-adolescent communication about adolescent strengths and, ultimately, enhance adolescent and parent well-being.
Her career achievements include receiving several awards and working with various publications, including:
- Fellow, NICHD Summer Institute on Applied Research in Child and Adolescent Development (2009)
- Associate Editor, AJOB Empirical Bioethics (2010-2015)
- Editorial Board, Journal of Pediatric Psychology (2010- )
- Recipient, Marjorie A. Bowman New Investigator Research Award, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (2014)
- Ethics Special Section Editor, Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology (2019- )