When Dr. Dwayvania “Dee” Miller said “yes,” the UNC Infectious Diseases community was thrilled.
“Dee leads with heart and purpose, whether she’s mentoring new fellows or applying her global public health training,” said Dr. Claire Farel, Medical Director of Eastowne’s ID Clinic.
When someone says yes to becoming a chief resident or fellow, what exactly is one saying yes to? Chief positions typically involve a combination of leadership, mentorship, teaching and administrative duties. Always an honor, they often serve as a stepping stone to future leadership or faculty roles.
“I’m a liaison between the fellows and administration wherever the need arises, and a ‘big sister’ to the new fellows coming in,” said Miller, who will be delivering lectures to fellows, working with program leadership to help steer the program, and working on building a social media presence for the ID Fellowship program.
“Dee was the obvious choice to be our inaugural Chief Fellow,” Farel said. “She has incredible energy and a genuine enthusiasm for medicine in general, and infectious diseases in particular. She’s a careful listener and an astute clinician, and her compassion for both patients and colleagues really stands out.”
Choosing to Specialize in Infectious Diseases
Miller grew up on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas. She received her medical training from the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and residency at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the South Bronx in Internal medicine.
“I chose UNC for my ID Fellowship because it seemed to be one of the few spots that was still doing great work globally. I also knew I wanted to pursue a Master of Public Health and was attracted to the Gillings School of Global Public health.”
But Miller says she ultimately chose infectious diseases because it’s a field that requires thinking about the patient as a whole, including their social and environmental factors, as they all provide clues to the infectious disease process.
“Infectious Diseases is also a geographic field, and what may be common in one region may be rare in another, so it always keeps you in a position to learn and to grow,” Miller said. “Plus, we get to serve the most vulnerable, marginalized populations and I think that unique patient group helps you grow in compassion. And there’s the most interesting differential list among all specialties.”
Dr. Chris Sellers, the program director for the UNC Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program, says Miller’s leadership skills ensure the fellows in the program continue to ‘steer the ship.’
“Dee is a really outstanding ID clinician–smart, thorough, and incredibly dedicated to her patients—and a colleague who brightens everyone’s day. She brings previous experience as a Chief Resident in Residency and creativity in thinking about ways to improve the fellowship and the division.”
Miller is also completing her Prevention Medicine Residency which she combined with ID during her second year, working with Dr. Shannon Aymes, the program director. In her current rotation at Piedmont Health, she is assisting with the closure of healthcare gaps and quality measures within their system.
For her MPH, she’s working with Michelle Floris-Moore to study breast cancer screening in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) / Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) Combined Cohort Study (MACS/WIHS-CSS), a collaborative research effort to understand and reduce the impact of chronic health conditions that affect people living with HIV. As part of her MPH, she’s learning about humanitarian health work as a Gillings Humanitarian Health Intern.
“This has been an amazing opportunity to work with the NGO ALIGHT in the Sudan, evaluating their efforts to provide safe, equitable and quality healthcare for internally displaced persons, refugees and migrants during this current civil war. This has been the highlight of my year, and also a unique challenge, to combine both my public health and clinical skill set. I’m hoping to work with this group on the current cholera crisis.”