UMSON PhD Student Is School’s First Fulbright U.S. Student Program Scholar

Baltimore, Md. – University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) PhD student Abaneh Ebangwese, Cert ’24, BSN ’15, RN, CCRN, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship, becoming the first UMSON student ever selected for the honor. The Fulbright is a scholarship granted by the U.S. Department of State that supports research, study, and teaching opportunities in more than 140 countries.

As part of the 2025 - 26 Fulbright program, Ebangwese will travel in late December to Yaoundé, the capitol of Cameroon, where she will spend nine months conducting research to identify and analyze cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among adults there. In preparing her Fulbright application, she discovered that Cameroon’s most recent peer-reviewed data on CVD prevalence dates back to 2017.

Her work will involve partnering with local health facilities and community stakeholders to collect survey and biometric data on health indicators such as blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, diet, physical activity, smoking, sleep, and body composition. She will also use statistical methods to examine how these risk factors occur individually and in clusters within this population. This will provide insight into patterns of CVD vulnerability in an under-researched region of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ebangwese’s family is originally from Cameroon; she is first-generation American. Her interest in CVD is reflected in her PhD dissertation, which examines CVD risk factors among U.S. long-term care workers, a group considered marginalized due to systemic challenges such as low wages, physically demanding work, limited access to health care, and high occupational stress. 

While enrolled in the PhD program, Ebangwese also earned UMSON’s Global Health Certificate, designed to prepare health professionals for global health practice, education, and research. 

Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided opportunities for more than 400,000 individuals of all backgrounds to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. They exchange ideas, foster people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. Notable Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel laureates, 93 Pulitzer Prize winners, 82 MacArthur Fellows, 44 heads of state or government, and thousands of leaders across sectors worldwide.

###

The University of Maryland School of Nursing, founded in 1889, is one of the oldest and largest nursing schools in the nation and is ranked among the top nursing schools nationwide. Enrolling more than 2,000 students in its baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral programs, the School develops leaders who shape the profession of nursing and impact the health care environment.