Marie Lynn Miranda became dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment, effective Jan. 1, 2012. She also holds an appointment as professor in SNRE and in the Department of Pediatrics. 

The Detroit native has devoted much of her professional career to research directed at improving the health status of disadvantaged populations, particularly children. She is the founding director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, a research, education, and outreach program committed to fostering environments where all children can prosper. CEHI’s peer-reviewed work is cited widely, including in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's current integrated science assessment on revisions to the national ambient air quality standard for lead. CEHI also works closely with a wide range of organizations and non-profits in addressing children’s environmental health issues in the community. In 2008, CEHI won the EPA’s Environmental Justice Achievement Award. CEHI is now headquartered at SNRE.

Most recently, CEHI has developed a new initiative in environmental health informatics, integrating spatial expertise with health-care data systems to build a more comprehensive understanding of patient behavior and outcomes. For example, with funding from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, CEHI is developing spatial data architectures and associated risk algorithms designed to help customize diabetes interventions to the social context in which patients live.

Miranda was previously a faculty member in the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program, the Department of Pediatrics, and the Global Health Institute at Duke University. 

Selected publications:

Miranda, M.L., Edwards, S.E. 2011. “Use of Spatial Analysis to Support Environmental Health Research and Practice.” North Carolina Medical Journal. 72(2):132-135.

Miranda, M.L., Edwards, S.E., Keating, M.H., Paul, C.J. 2011. “Making the Environmental Justice Grade: The Relative Burden of Air Pollution Exposure in the United States.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 8(6): 1755-1771.

Burgette, L.F., Miranda, M.L., Reiter, J.P. “Exploratory quantile regression with many covariates: An application to adverse birth outcomes." Epidemiology. Forthcoming.

Kim, D., Miranda, M.L., Tootoo, J.L., Bradley, P., Gelfand, A., 2011. “Spatial Modeling for Groundwater Arsenic Levels in North Carolina.” Environmental Science & Technology. 45(11):4824-3.

Neelon, B., Swamy, G.K., Burgette, L.F., Miranda, M.L., 2011. “A Bayesian growth mixture model to examine maternal hypertension and birth outcomes.” Statistics in Medicine. 30(22):2721-35. doi: 10.1002/sim.4291.

M.L. Miranda, S.E. Edwards, and E.R. Myers. 2011. "Adverse birth outcomes among nulliparous versus multiparous women."  Public Health Reports. 126(6): 797-805.  doi: 10.1002/sim.4291.

Gray, S.C., Gelfand, A.E., Miranda, M.L., 2011. “Hierarchical spatial modeling of uncertainty in air pollution and birth weight study.” Statistics in Medicine. 30(17):2187-98. doi: 10.1002/sim.4234.

Positions:

• 9/11 to present: Professor, School of Natural Resources and Environment and Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan
• 9/11 to present: Adjunct Professor, Nicholas School of the Environment and Department of Pediatrics, Duke University
• 5/11 to 8/11: Professor, Nicholas School of the Environment and Department of Pediatrics and faculty member in the Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program and Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University
• 12/08 to 5/11: Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center
• 12/07 to 5/11: Associate Professor and faculty member in the Integrated Toxicology Program, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. Director, Children’s Environmental Health Initiative.
• 1/04 to 11/07: Associate Research Professor and faculty member in the Integrated Toxicology Program, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. Director, Children’s Environmental Health Initiative.
• 7/99 to 12/03: Associate Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy, Director of Undergraduate Programs, and faculty member in the Integrated Toxicology Program, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. Director, Children’s Environmental Health Initiative.
• 7/95 to 6/99: Assistant Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy and Director of Undergraduate Programs, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
• 8/90 to 6/95: Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University.

From July 2000 through June 2005, held the Dan and Margaret Gabel Chair in Environmental Ethics and Sustainable Environmental Management, a 5-year fixed term endowed chair.

Current grant support:

United States Environmental Protection Agency (5/1/07 – 4/30/12): Southern Center on Environmentally Driven Disparities in Birth Outcomes (SCEDDBO)
Description: The central mission of the Center is to determine how environmental, social, and host factors jointly drive health disparities in birth outcomes.  Specific goals of the Center are: 1) To develop and operate an interdisciplinary children’s health research center with a focus on understanding how biological, physiological, environmental, and social aspects of vulnerability contribute to health disparities; 2) To enhance research in children’s health at Duke by promoting research interactions among programs in biomedicine, environmental health, and the social sciences and establishing an infrastructure to support and extend interdisciplinary research; 3) To develop new methodologies for incorporating innovative statistical analysis; 4) To serve as a technical and educational resource to the local community, region, nation, and to international agencies in the area of children’s health and health disparities; and 5) To translate the results of the Center into direct interventions in clinical care and practice.  SCEDDBO is part of the NIEHS/EPA national portfolio of children’s environmental health centers.
Role: Principal Investigator.

The Duke Endowment (10/16/2008 – 12/31/2012): Bringing Spatial Analysis to The Duke Endowment
Description: The objective of this project is to develop a prototype for how geospatial mapping and analysis can support The Duke Endowment’s objective to understand the extent and distribution of health disparities and subsequently intervene to improve health outcomes for those most vulnerable in our communities.
Role: Principal Investigator

National Institutes of Health (9/28/2009 – 7/31/2012) African Americans and Environmental Cancers: Sharing Histories to Build Trust
Description: The central objective of this project is to advance the partnership between the Sisters Network and Duke to address community concerns regarding environmental contributors to cancer health disparities among high-risk African-American families.
Role: Principal Investigator

World Health Organization (11/1/2009 – 12/31/2012): Malaria Decision Analysis Support Tool: Evaluating Health, Social and Environmental Impacts and Policy Tradeoffs
Description: The objective of this project is to assist governments of participating countries (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) with the development of a Malaria Decision Analysis Support Tool in order to evaluate health, social and environmental impacts and policy tradeoffs related to malaria vector control.
Role: Investigator (Kramer, PI)

National Institutes of Health (7/1/2010 – 9/30/2014): Implementation Science to Optimize Malaria Vector Control and Disease Management
Description: The goal of this project is to improve malaria control outcomes through an implementation science approach that integrates health delivery experiments and decision support modeling to promote joint optimization of vector control and disease management strategies.  The project involves a major 4-arm field-based intervention in the Morogoro region of Tanzania.
Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Kramer, PI)

Department of Health and Human Services (9/1/2010 – 8/31/2013): Accelerating Adoption of Comparative Effectiveness Research in Premature Infants
Description: This project tests the central hypothesis that electronic medical record feeding data and use of geospatial mapping techniques coupled with targeted educational interventions will result in an increase in the rate of initiation of human milk feedings from 65% to 80%, an increase in human milk feedings at 30 days of age from 50% to 75%, and a decrease in exposure to harmful therapeutic agents and antibiotics.
Role: Investigator (Smith, PI)

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (9/22/2010 – 9/21/2013): GIS Analysis of NIEHS Environmental Polymorphisms Registry
Description: This project supports the NIEHS Environmental Polymorphism Registry, an effort to collect DNA samples for up 20,000 individual in the North Carolina Triangle Area. GIS will be used to link demographic and environmental data to each patient in the registry. Patient addresses will be geocoded, or spatially referenced, to street or tax parcel datasets. Data sources will include US census demographic data, proximity to roadways, and multiple estimates of pollution exposure. This will allow researchers to explore linkages between environmental response genes and common diseases.
Role: Principal Investigator

Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease of Cabarrus/Kannapolis (November 2010 – October 2013): Georeferencing the MURDOCK Study
Description: This project uses spatial information to support the MURDOCK Integrated Data Repository, a registry of samples and data collected in Cabarrus/Kannapolis to identify linkages between diseases and disorders. GIS is being used to characterize the community, to inform study design and recruitment decisions, track recruitment spatially, and link additional spatial data of interest. In addition, efforts are being made to collaborate with similar community health initiatives in the Durham area.
Role: Principal Investigator on Georeferencing Grant (Califf, Overall PI of MURDOCK)

National Association of Chronic Disease Directors/CDC (10/01/2011 – 09/29/2012): State and Local Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Surveillance
Description: The central objective of this project is to enable both state health departments and local health departments to conduct GIS surveillance of heart disease and stroke in collaboration and partnership with a variety of chronic disease-related public and private organizations at the state and local levels.  Selected state and local health department personnel receive intensive training on the use of GIS to improve public health surveillance activities.
Role: Principal Investigator

Honors:

• A.B. Duke Scholar
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Truman Scholar
• National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow
• Marshall Scholar (awarded but not taken)
• Harvard University Chiles Fellowship
• Century III Leaders Alumni Grant
• AAUW American Fellowship
• Lilly Foundation Fellow
• Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Award for Teaching Excellence
• U.S. EPA Environmental Justice Achievement Award
• Thomas Langford Lectureship Award

Public service:

• East Durham’s Children’s Initiative Advisory Board
• Infectious, Reproductive, Asthma, and Pulmonary (IRAP) Conditions NIH study section
• Member, USEPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee