Mary Ann (Heffron) Cooney ’78

By Laurie Morrissey

Whether it's aids, alcoholism, or avian flu, it affects the citizens of New Hampshire—and as the director of the state’s Division of Public Health Services, Mary Ann Cooney needs to know about it. Over the course of her career, the Saint Anselm nursing grad has brought her skills to an ever-widening setting: from the neurology intensive care unit at Beth Israel Hospital to the Manchester, N.H., school system, and now to the entire state. She has also steadily built on her Saint Anselm education. She earned an M.S. in nursing and is close to completing a master of public health degree at the University of New Hampshire.

“People at national conferences are surprised that the director is not a doctor,” Cooney says. But as she points out, the nation’s surgeon general was an RN before he was an MD. She believes that if more physicians started out as nurses, they would be better at their jobs. “We’re trained to look at people from not only a disease standpoint but a human standpoint, taking into consideration their environment and their relationships,” she says.

She approaches her job as state public health director the same way: “Like an individual, a community has its environment, its culture and its values.”

Dealing with everything from second-hand smoke to sexually transmitted disease—even in a small state—carries big challenges. Public health officials are preparing for an epidemic of avian flu, for which there is currently no vaccine.

“Potentially 30 percent of the population would be very sick or infectious, so the burden on our infrastructure could be huge. The challenges will be logistical, legal and ethical,” Cooney says. “Because we have vaccines and antibiotics, people in our country have become complacent about remaining free from disease. We have to remind them to take basic preventive measures like washing their hands and staying home if they’re sick.”

Other new public health concerns include reemerging preventable diseases, new illnesses caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and terrorism. Cooney’s goal is to develop a local public health structure to help New Hampshire prepare for public health emergencies.

As for her rise from floor nurse to state health director, Cooney credits Joyce Clifford ’59, who was vice president of nursing at Beth Israel during her years employed there. “I had a powerful professional presence in her that greatly influenced the way I’ve shaped my career.”