In one or more of the disclosed embodiments, a punch-through disturb effect in a memory device can be reduced by biasing a selected word line at a program voltage to program a selected memory cell, biasing word lines on the drain side of the series string with a Vpass voltage, turning off an adjacent memory cell to the selected memory cell, and biasing remaining word lines on the source side of the turned-off memory cell with a Vlow voltage that is less than Vpass.