Mary Therese PhelanFor University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) PhD student Abaneh Ebangwese, CERT ’24, BSN ’15, RN, CCRN, acceptance into the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program — as the first UMSON student ever to have been accepted — runs in the family.
It was Ebangwese’s younger sister, Santita, a Fulbright Scholar in France during the 2022-23 academic year, who encouraged Ebangwese to apply to the 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, Abaneh is headed 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 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 explains.
First-Generation American
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, she explains.
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. Around the same time, Yolanda Ogbolu, PhD ’11, MS ’05, BSN ’04, NNP, FNAP, FAAN, the Bill and Joanne Conway Dean, encouraged students to apply for the Fulbright.
After completing the monthslong application process, in late May Ebangwese received the email informing her she was a Fulbright finalist.
“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. I was just like, ‘No way!” she recalls.
‘This Is My Chance’
Ebangwese’s passion for public and global health began as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester (New York), where she earned a degree in health and society (now public health) and participated in several community health projects and studied abroad in China. A mentor later suggested that a nursing degree would give her a stronger clinical foundation in public health, advice that led her to UMSON.
With Fulbright, “I’m kind of doing a 180, coming back to community and public/global health because when I studied abroad, I had an amazing experience,” she says.
Applying for the Fulbright “was an opportunity that kind of just fell into my lap,” Ebangwese says. “I thought, ‘This is my chance. Let me just go ahead and apply.’ ”
