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Professor of public health and health sciences Matthew Miller has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine in recognition of epidemiological work associating firearm ownership with higher rates of suicide.
Matthew Miller likes to stop problems before they start.
A professor of public health and health sciences at Northeastern University, Miller has spent the past quarter-century developing an “epidemiologic perspective,” he says, “focused on injuries of all types, but mostly firearm-related injuries and suicide.”
Perhaps his most noteworthy work — and the work recently recognized by the National Academy of Medicine, which has elected him as a new member — found a strong correlation between the availability of firearms in a home with an increased probability of suicide.
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) serves in both a consultory capacity at the national level “to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions,” the Academy wrote in its election announcement, and recognizes “outstanding contributions to knowledge” and the sciences.
Miller came to epidemiologic work while studying oncology during his medical training. He wanted “to figure out if there are ways of preventing people from getting cancer in the first place,” rather than only treating them after the fact.
During his coursework, Miller met economist David Hemenway, who did work on firearm-related violence. He would eventually become both a mentor and close collaborator.
Miller says that his primary contributions have helped “strengthen the evidentiary basis for the claim that having a gun in your home — whether you personally own it or whether you live with somebody who does — puts everyone in that home at substantially higher risk of dying by suicide.”
Miller has also been involved in significant pharmacoepidemiologic work, “looking at the risks of falls and fractures” among older adults taking prescription antidepressants and other psychoactives, and how antidepressants can actually promote suicide in younger people “instead of prevent it,” he says.
One of the possibilities of data-driven epidemiologic research like Miller’s is that the same data can reveal multiple powerful observations.
One study Miller is currently undertaking looks at the increased risk of death by suicide among women who live with a gun owner, but don’t own a firearm themselves.
Using the same database — LongSHOT, “a gun registry that’s unique to California,” Miller says, recording “all lawful handgun transfers, and since 2014 all lawful long gun transfers” — Miller and his team can make additional studies using the same data.
For instance, based “on some preliminary data,” he says, “it looks like a woman’s risk of being killed, especially by an intimate partner in her home, goes up substantially when the man she is living with becomes a first-time, lawful handgun owner.”
Miller plans to further extend this research by looking at the efficacy of restraining orders and other so-called “red flag” laws.
Miller is adamant that he’s responsible for none of this work in isolation.
“Even though I was recognized for this,” he says, “it depends on the input and the synergy that comes from working with people who are incredibly smart, thoughtful, and hopefully we make each other’s work better.”
In fact, Miller notes that one of his frequent collaborators, David Studdert, was elected into NAM alongside Miller. He also points to Deborah Azrael and Sonja Swanson as critical colleagues.
Miller is less focused on the accolade that comes with being named a member of NAM than on the opportunity it provides, “to promote the idea that people who decide to become gun owners — for whatever reason — are assuming risk for themselves and imposing risks on others they live with that need to be taken into account,” he says, “to minimize harm to children and to adults.”
With “the imprimatur that the Academy affords,” Miller hopes to “reach people that would be hard to reach otherwise.”