Associate Professor
Yvette Miller
Faculty of Health,
School of Public Health & Social Work
Biography
Associate Professor Yvette Miller is an internationally recognised expert in evaluating reproductive health service and system performance using consumer reports of care, with demonstrated success in developing effective collaborative relationships with health service researchers and practitioners at local, national and international levels. She collaborates with a broad array of health professionals, consumer advocates, social and behavioural scientists and health economists who share a public health or population-level perspective in planning and conducting research, a woman-centred and consumer-focused approach to health service delivery and reform, and a fundamental commitment to preserving the human rights of people engaged in health services and systems.Yvette is a member of the international White Ribbon Alliance Respectful Maternity Care Working Group, the Expert Review Committee for the Canadian Speaking of Respect Study (Birth Place Lab, University of British Columbia), and is the Australian National Coordinator for Babies Born Better (a long-term project for the improvement of maternal and childbirth care around the world managed by the University of Central Lancashire).
Yvette has extensive experience conducting online and postal surveys, interviews, focus groups and co-design workshops about people’s reproductive healthcare experiences. She has worked on the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women's Health (funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health) and established the ongoing Having a Baby in Queensland Survey program in partnership with the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in 2009. She is experienced in asking women to report on highly sensitive experiences including stillbirth, obstetric violence, and postpartum mental health, and in open data sharing and public reporting standards for consumer-reported data.
Her research has informed cultural safety inclusions in Queensland clinical guidelines (e.g. Partnering with the woman who declines recommended maternity care, 2020), informed statewide clinical guidelines for Induction of Labour (2018), and prompted resources supporting patient-provider decision-making endorsed by the Queensland Maternity and Neonatal Clinical Network for statewide use (www.health.qld.gov.au/consent).
Yvette has successfully led multiple large research trials to evaluate health service innovations with large-scale recruitment and retention of consumers and mentorship of early career and lived experience researchers. These have included evaluating statewide implementation of the Universal Postnatal Contact Initiative and the Pregnancy Health Record in Queensland (2009-2011), multiple RCTs to evaluate the impact of innovations designed to support preventive health behaviours in pregnancy (e.g., 'The Pregnancy Pocketbook') and postpartum (e.g., 'MobileMums'), and a quasi-experimental trial evaluating consumer and clinician decision support systems for timing of admission to hospital in labour ('I-ADMIT').
She has worked with several PHNs and NFP organisations to evaluate and improve health workforce capacity and service quality, including a 6-year collaboration with Brisbane North PHN to advance consumer-based mental health service evaluation and improvement. She has a reputation for pragmatism and prioritising the consumer experience in health service evaluation.
Yvette contributes to effective governance and workplace culture through several leadership roles. She is an elected academic member of QUT Council (2021-2025) who are responsible at the highest level for the effective governance and operations of the university, and the Chancellor-nominated member of University Academic Board (2021-2025), the academic governance committee at QUT. She is a member of QUT Faculty of Health Staff Culture Working Group, and was the Director of Research for the School of Public Health and Social Work at QUT from 2014-2018.
Personal details
Positions
- Associate Professor
Faculty of Health,
School of Public Health & Social Work
Keywords
health services, maternity care, patient reported outcomes, patient-centred care, physical activity, survey methodology, women's health
Research field
Public Health and Health Services
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy - Human Movement Studies (University of Queensland)
- BA (Psychology) (Hons) (University of Newcastle)
Teaching
Yvette teaches in undergraduate courses that include Health Education and Behaviour Change, Health Promotion Practice, and the Health Needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. She coordinates the final-year industry placements for undergraduate Public Health students, and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate coursework student projects across the Faculty of Health, including both Public Health and Social Work and Psychology and Counselling (Honours) students.
She has successfully supervised 19 students completing research as part of their Honours degrees in Bachelor of Behavioural Science (Hons) at QUT), Bachelor of Psychological Science (Hons) at The University of Queensland and Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Hons) at The University of Sydney. She has also supervised 15 coursework Masters research dissertations in Master of Applied Psychology (UQ), Master of Health Management (QUT), Master of Educational and Developmental Psychology (QUT), Master of Science (Hons) in Genetic Counselling (Griffith University) and Master of Public Health (QUT).
HDR supervision is also central to Associate Professor Miller's teaching and research agenda. The PhD, Masters and Honours students whom she has mentored have routinely published articles from their work in peer-reviewed journals and gone on to create careers in clinical, research, and academic settings. She takes an individualised, apprentice-based approach that supports students in the preparation of their theses while facilitating a broad and strategic approach to skill development that is tailored to individual goals.
Current and completed higher degree research supervision is outlined on the 'Supervision' tab.
Experience
Yvette is committed to growing an evidence-base in consumer-centred health service evaluation that is readily converted into improved policy and practice for real-world benefits. She has a reputation in the sector for prioritising the consumer experience and pragmatism in evaluation design and methods, consumer-centred survey design, and usable reporting of evaluation findings for decision making about individual healthcare use, policy and service provision.
Her research informed statewide maternity and neonatal clinical guidelines for Induction of Labour (2018) and Partnering with the woman who declines recommended maternity care (2020), recommendations from the Grattan Institute for reducing low-value care in private hospitals (Duckett & Nemet, 2019), and the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages' Early Pregnancy Loss Recognition Certificate to acknowledge pregnant consumer experiences that are otherwise not formally recognised and improve psychosocial recovery.
She has developed and delivered several consumer products for primary prevention (e.g. MobileMums, Pregnancy Pocketbook) and consumer decision-making (‘Birthplace’: https://vimeo.com/246491640; the ‘Having a Baby in Queensland Book’ delivered in General Practice).
She established a statewide program of consumer surveys of maternity care in partnership with the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and is data custodian for maternity service user experience data from >14 000 consumers, and a database of >11,000 maternity service users that has been used to engage consumers in other research. The open data sharing processes for Having a Baby in Queensland Survey data that she established have resulted in major government reports, >30 peer-reviewed journal publications, 9 research degree dissertations, 24 conference presentations and > 60 media interviews or articles.
She has independently evaluated implementation of multiple statewide health service reforms, including the Universal Postnatal Contact Initiative (2009-2011) and the Pregnancy Health Record (2009-2011).
Yvette delivered 113 Facility & Regional Performance Reports to health service decision-makers and practitioners across Queensland to facilitate maternity service improvement planning based on consumer experiences of care, and promoted their usefulness through invitations to present at Grand Rounds at several Hospital and Health Service facilities.
Public media to engage the community in outcomes of her research have been published in The Australian, The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Brisbane Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Conversation. Her research has featured in online professional and consumer blogs (e.g. 6 minutes, BubHub, Birth Small Talk), Network 10 and Network 9 News, ABC National Radio, National Indigenous Radio Service and 4EB (ethnic news radio).
Publications
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Yvette, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Selected research projects
- Title
- Helping Women meet their Physical Activity Goals: A Randomised, Controlled Trial of a Personalised Program Delivered by Mobile Telephone Text Messaging
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- 614244
- Start year
- 2010
- Keywords
- Physical Activity; Health Promotion; Preventive Medicine
Projects listed above are funded by Australian Competitive Grants. Projects funded from other sources are not listed due to confidentiality agreements.
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Exploring the PUrpose, Practice and Quality of Education in Routine Maternity Care
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Carol Windsor - Adherence to Breastfeeding Supportive Practices in Sri Lankan Hospitals by Mode of Birth
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Rebecca Byrne - Do Family-Friendly Work Conditions Benefit Women in Malaysia?
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Jenni Mays - PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Jo Durham - Cultivating transformation in maternity services culture by empowering midwives and midwifery students through the application of a mentor program
Professional Doctorate, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Rebecca Spooner-Lane - “Bringing Women in”: Understanding women’s experience of miscarriage and role of healthcare practices, policies and procedures
MPhil, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Carol Windsor
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- From Policy to Patient Care: Exploring the Implementation of Government Directed Policy in the Hospital Setting (2019)
- Physical Activity Behaviour Among Women with Previous Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Queensland Wide Exploratory Study (2010)
- MobileMums: a physical activity intervention delivered via SMS for disadvantaged postnatal women (2009)
- Pregnancy Pocketbook: Improving pregnancy health behaviours in a disadvantaged community (2009)
- The efficacy of Tai Chi and Qigong in reducing indicators of risk of Type 2 diabetes in adults with elevated blood glucose (2007)