Dr. B.J. Miller is one of the preeminent speakers on patient-centered, palliative and end-of-life care. Drawing on his expertise as a physician, former executive director of Zen Hospice Project and patient, he is an advocate for a healthcare system that maximizes quality of life and minimizes unnecessary suffering.
His TED Talk, “What Really Matters at the End of Life,” about keeping the patient at the center of care and encouraging empathic end-of-life care, has garnered more than six million views to date and is ranked among the most viewed talks. Miller also speaks on the therapeutic potential of aesthetics and how to design for life.
He is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the country’s first outpatient palliative care clinics. He is the Dream Foundation Honorary Medical Chair, the only national dream-granting organization for terminally ill adults.
Raised in Chicago, Miller studied art history as an undergraduate at Princeton University. After several years working in both the art and disability-rights nonprofit communities, he enrolled at UCSF where he received his doctor of medicine as a Regents’ Scholar in 2001. He completed his internal medicine residency at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and his fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Miller has received a variety of awards for his work, including the William Osler Distinguished Teaching Award and AAHPM/Project on Death in America Palliative Medicine Community Leadership Award.