Dr. Claudia S. Miller is an allergist/immunologist specializing in environmental medicine and professor emeritus at UT Health San Antonio. She is leader of the TILT Research Program for Chemical Intolerance at UT Health San Antonio.
Dr. Miller graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree with honors in Molecular Biology at The University of Wisconsin at Madison. She received her M.S. in environmental health from The University of California School of Public Health, Berkeley. After receiving her M.D. from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, she completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, and her fellowship in allergy/immunology at the UT Health San Antonio. Prior to medical school, she worked as an industrial hygienist for 12 years and directed occupational health training for compliance officers at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s National Training Institute in Chicago. She founded the South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) program that trained medical and public health students at the U.S.-Mexico Border. She was the founding dean for the 4-Year M.D.-M.P.H. program at UT Health San Antonio in partnership with the UT School of Public Health, which served as the model program for this dual degree in Texas. These programs continue to train hundreds of Texas medical students in public health.
Dr. Miller organized and chaired two National Institutes of Health meetings on chemical intolerance, and documented Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance (TILT), a proposed disease mechanism she first described in 1996. She co-authored a landmark report for the state of New Jersey on chemical susceptibility, for which the state received the American Association for World Health’s Macedo Award, and a professionally acclaimed book, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes (2nd edition, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1998).
She has authored or co-authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed publications on the health effects of low-level chemical exposures. She developed the TILT Self Assessment, including the Quick Environmental Exposure and Sensitivity Inventory (QEESI), which is the leading clinical and research instrument for assessing chemical intolerance. The QEESI links symptoms with exposures and measures the life impact of intolerances. Researchers in more than a dozen countries have used the QEESI, which has emerged as the reference standard for chemical intolerance and is used in lieu of a case definition.
Her federal appointments include: the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs Persian Gulf Expert Scientific Committee, and the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors. She has served as consultant to the chief-of-staff of the Houston VA for its Persian Gulf Regional Referral Center, and as an advisor to the Texas Department of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the Canadian, German, Japanese, and Swedish governments.
Miller was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Celebration and Hall of Fame in 2004.
