A Mother and Daughter’s Shared Path to Public Health

May 15, 2026 - 12:55

For the Nguyen family, the path to a career in public health started not in a classroom, but at the dinner table. When Thao Nguyen enrolled at UNLV to study public health, she was following a trail her mother, Linh, had blazed years earlier. Linh had earned her own degree in the same field from the same university, and the shared experience created an unexpected bond between them.

Linh recalls late nights spent studying epidemiology while her daughter did homework beside her. "I never pushed her toward public health," Linh said. "But she saw how much I loved the work, how I talked about community wellness and disease prevention as if they were personal missions." That passion stuck. When Thao declared her major, she chose the same program her mother had completed a decade prior.

The overlap went beyond a shared major. Thao took classes from professors who had taught her mother. One instructor remembered Linh as a quiet but determined student and noted the same traits in her daughter. "It was strange at first," Thao admitted. "Hearing stories about my mom as a student. But it also made me feel like I belonged here."

The two women now work in different areas of public health, but they still exchange notes on research and policy. Linh says watching her daughter graduate from the same program was a moment of quiet pride. "It was not about following in my footsteps," she said. "It was about walking the same road, but finding her own way."