When Melody Coffey-Love decided in mid-career that she would like to return to school for graduate studies, she faced a crisis. Although she had extensive experience in public health and was devoted to its mission, she was, first and foremost, a nurse. "Because I’m a nurse, I felt I should get my degree in nursing," she says, "but I also felt that getting more education in public health would be beneficial."

Fortunately for her, Cal State Long Beach offers a program that combines master’s degrees in both nursing and public health. However, Melody reached a crossroads again when she decided to pursue doctoral studies, and without hesitation, she chose the UCLA School of Nursing: "Nursing has such potential to make a great impact in health care," she says. "I want to be one of those people who makes that impact."

She seems likely to succeed, and the impact will come on her original turf: public health. For her dissertation, Melody is looking at the relationship between public health nurses and their community. A special focus is a Southern California district that is implementing a new model of public health nursing, using a community focus of practice. Rather than targeting individuals and families, the new model examines the health risks of an entire community, and nurses work with schools, neighborhood doctors, and other community institutions to promote health and prevent illness.

Her mentor, Professor MarySue Heilemann, says it is relatively unusual—but an asset to nursing as a discipline—that Melody chose to pursue a doctoral degree in nursing rather than public health. Her research will make an important contribution by "looking at aspects of how [the new] model translates into real living practice among nurses in daily work."

Melody brings to the task strong skills as "an inquisitive thinker," Professor Heilemann says. When Melody audited a course she teaches, the professor noticed that she was "very good at questioning the underlying assumptions that fuel what people do in life—for nurses, how they practice. If you’re able to go all the way back to the assumptions people make," Professor Heilemann says, "you can access the way things have always been done and open up the possibilities for what we might do better."

During her years at UCLA, Melody has invested additional time in learning a variety of research skills. Besides the courses that are part of the School of Nursing’s doctoral curriculum, Melody took qualitative research classes in the School of Education and learned ethnography in the Department of Anthropology.

In the education program, students were asked to do an ethnographic study. "I went to a laundromat because it was an everyday location, and I found that I could learn a great deal by talking with people about their daily lives," she says. "I ended up talking to men who do the laundry for their families, which was very interesting. I learned that I loved doing qualitative research and ethnography."

That's the approach she'll bring to her study of the new model of public health nursing, although in this case, it's something she knows a great deal about. After an early career in intensive care nursing, Melody turned to public health when her children were young. Working as a public health nurse for the City of Long Beach and Los Angeles County, she provided education and surveillance related to AIDS and HIV, worked in a district helping families, and was part of a team providing health care management for children with special health issues.

Melody finds the prevention aspect of public health nursing particularly rewarding: "It's just exciting to know you can make an impact. You work with people where they live, in their homes, and in the community. You can see how things interact in the context of the client's environment."

A lover of school, Melody has not looked ahead yet to her subsequent career. Professor Heilemann says that options for PhD nurses are plentiful, and maturity is no issue. Highly sought after, they can find positions in academia, hospitals, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and think tanks.

Melody knows only one thing for certain: "I'm first a nurse—no matter what specialty I go into or what path I take, it's always from the perspective of nursing. I remember where my roots are."

Published in Winter 2005, Graduate Quarterly