By Christina Frank
As the daughter of a career Army officer, it made perfect sense to Laura Manzo to combine her love of nursing with a commitment to military service.
Manzo joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) while pursuing her BSN in and committed to four years in the Army after she graduated. Those four years turned into what has now been a 16-year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps — one that has taken her across the globe, with deployments to Afghanistan and Guyana and assignments in Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Wisconsin.
In 2022, Manzo decided to pursue her interest in research with doctoral education. She applied to the Yale University School of Arts & Sciences for a PhD program at the Yale School of Nursing. The military requires a maximum of three years of study, which the faculty were prepared to support. “The faculty was beyond amazing,” says Laura. “They were so incredibly supportive of my timeline.”
Her dissertation focused on a critical but under-researched area: the association between perinatal mental health conditions and adverse pregnancy outcomes among active-duty servicewomen. “What we found was that servicewoman with diagnosed mental health conditions had a significantly increased risk of preterm birth,” she says. “That gives us insight into how we can adjust clinical practice to provide targeted care, especially because military women have a higher burden of mental health conditions than civilian women.”
The PhD program is designed to provide the requisite knowledge and skills to conduct a rigorous and clinically meaningful dissertation. Dr. Julie Womack, Chair of her dissertation and Dr. Joan Combellick, expert in maternal mental health were instrumental in support of Laura for the success of a robust and meaningful dissertation.
Now, with her PhD in hand, she will transition to a new role as a Nurse-Scientist at Womack Army Medical Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There she’ll be doing research within the military healthcare system. “I’ve always been interested in research,” Manzo says. “This is just the beginning.”