The Cope for Hope Team

Our internationally-known parent-child nurses and clinical researchers developed the COPE programs nearly twenty years ago

Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP/PMHNP, FAAN; President

Dr. Bernadette Melnyk is a nationally/internationally recognized expert, author, lecturer, nurse practitioner and researcher in pediatrics, child and adolescent mental health, and evidence-based practice. Over the past two decades, she has conducted multiple studies establishing the efficacy of the COPE program for parents of critically ill/hospitalized children, premature infants and their parents. Dr. Melnyk is both a pediatric nurse practitioner and child-family psychiatric nurse practitioner with over 140 publications, including two books, Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare and A Guide to Best Practice and the KySS Guide to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Screening, Early Intervention and Health Promotion. She has received numerous national and regional awards for her work, and is an elected fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice. Dr. Melnyk earned her BSN at West Virginia University, her MSN at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by her PhD and Post-Master's Certification in Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner at the University of Rochester.

Nancy Feinstein, PhD, RCN; Vice President

Dr. Nancy Feinstein is a nationally recognized expert with over 30 years of clinical, teaching, and research experience as a perinatal nurse. She also has served on national committees for the Association of Women's Health and Neonatal Nursing (AWHONN) and was a co-developer/author of the AWHONN Fetal Heart Monitoring Program. She has conducted intervention research to promote coping, particularly women coping with preterm labor, as Principal Investigator, and with parents coping with the birth of a premature infant, as Co- Investigator of the Improving outcomes of LBW Premature Infants and Parents study funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, NIH. She is an author and co-author on multiple evidence-based peer reviewed articles and papers presented nationally and internationally. Her education includes earning her BSN from State University of Albany, Albany, NY and a Masters Degree with a focus on the developing family from Catholic University in Washington, DC. She earned her PhD in Nursing at the University of Rochester.