Alumni Humanitarian Award

The Alumni Humanitarian Award, established in 2001, is bestowed upon alumni of the University of Illinois by the Alumni Association, on behalf of the University of Illinois. It is presented to those alumni who, through their outstanding involvement and dedication, have made a significant contribution of volunteer leadership or service which has improved or enriched the lives of others and the welfare of humanity, and whose accomplishments reflect admirably on or bring honor to their Alma Mater.

2012 Recipient

Alvin A. Miller, ’51 com, md ’53
Physician, Community Medical Group, Pediatrics/Neonatology, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Through the NEWSTART program of Project Concern International, Dr. Alvin Miller has worked to save the lives of newborns in Romania and the future of hundreds of thousands of children housed in its orphanages.

After the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, the Romanian health ministry turned to the international community for advice on its neonatal practices. For two years in the early 1990s, Miller visited periodically to familiarize medical personnel in major hospitals and rural clinics with various health-care procedures. Through demonstrating available treatment, he helped change the nation’s convention of sending children born with minor and correctable physical defects to live in orphanages, a practice which had brought the population of these institutions to more than 400,000.

Miller expanded his impact by preparing a curriculum to be used by medical teams he recruited to volunteer, as he did, in Romania.