Back to School—Thirty Years Later

Longtime Ob/Gyn Cee Ann Davis Follows her Passion for Public Health as an MPH Student.

Cee Ann Davis, MD, first felt the pull of public health as a resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Nearly 30 years later, the 55-year-old ob/gyn decided to enroll in the Bloomberg School’s MPH Program and pursue her longtime passion for public health.

Davis closed her Winchester, Virginia, medical practice and temporarily moved to an apartment in Baltimore within walking distance of the School.

“I loved my patients and my practice, but I looked around my community and saw a dozen doctors just as board-certified as I was, and realized that I wanted to spread my wings and do something more useful in public service,” Davis explains.

With her children grown and husband retired, the time seemed right to make a move.

After completing her MPH, Davis hopes to become certified in preventive medicine with a practice focus on maternal, child and family health.

Marie Diener-West, PhD, chair of the School’s Master of Public Health Program, says that each year the incoming MPH class of approximately 250 full-time students typically includes at least a handful of mid-career students, most with health-oriented careers of 15 to 20 years or more..

“For a physician, this can open up an opportunity to go beyond an individual patient and influence programs or policies,” Diener-West says.

Davis applied only to this MPH program, basing that decision on her memories of the School’s collaborative atmosphere.

“The departments are really interconnected and everyone’s interested in what’s happening in other areas,” says Davis, who is pursuing her MPH with a concentration in Social and Behavioral Sciences “It’s an approach that opens the door to inspiration and solutions from unexpected directions.

“Everyone here has some amazing piece in their background,” she adds. “Even the most young and innocent-looking folks have been out in foreign countries making a difference and taking charge.”