Russell Miller is a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Community and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Tokyo where he is pursuing his PhD part-time while working full-time as a health outcomes consultant at a multi-national contract research organization. Russell has bachelor's degrees in Biochemistry and Interdisciplinary Global Studies where he studied Japanese.
At the beginning of his career, Russell studied the causative agents of infectious disease (parasites and pathogenic bacteria) but turned to public health to better address well-being of his local community. After moving to Japan, Russell became interested in mental health and health equity especially for minority populations. Japan is a world-class example of universal health coverage and has one of the longest-lived populations in the world. However, upon closer examination there are cracks appearing in the health system taking into consideration the needs of a super-aged population, a shrinking working population and a rapidly growing immigrant population that struggles to integrate.
Russell's Master's degree research explored the health and well-being inequities in Japanese society. He has continued to pursue these topics before/after COVID-19 and has published 4 first-author papers. His latest project is working with the international community to develop a multilingual platform for improving access to healthcare for vulnerable populations in Japan. This platform crowd-sources positive information on local healthcare institutions/providers and their cross-cultural competence. Russell's current research is about how trusted information from other community members may lower the barrier to healthcare seeking among vulnerable populations, like migrants, while improving their well-being.
