Yolanda Ogbolu, PhD, NNP, FNAP, FAAN
The Bill and Joanne Conway Dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing

Yolanda Ogbolu began her tenure as the Bill and Joanne Conway Dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) in July 2023. An experienced researcher at the international and national levels, educator, clinician, and public servant, Ogbolu also is an associate professor in UMSON’s Department of Partnerships, Professional Education, and Practice — which she chaired before becoming dean — and is co-director of its Center for Health Equity and Outcomes Research.

Ogbolu was appointed to the UMSON faculty in 2010 as deputy director of the school’s Office of Global Health and became its director in 2015. During her tenure, she developed and grew the global health program at UMSON and at University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) . She forged and maintained international partnerships; developed new global health education initiatives, including a Global Health Certificate program and service-learning opportunities; and created a culture of interprofessional collaboration across campus.

Raised just two blocks from the UMB campus, Ogbolu has dedicated her career to addressing health disparities in marginalized local and global communities.

Early in her career, she helped lead development of the Primary Care Health Specialist curriculum for advanced practice in Nigeria and later served as an expert reviewer for the World Health Organization on the implementation science curriculum for health professionals in low-resource settings. She also served as the principal investigator on a seven-year pioneering program to address the critical shortage of medical, nursing, and dental workers in Rwanda, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Global Fund (Ministry of Health Rwanda). This work developed curriculum and nurse educators to advance clinical nursing practice through development and implementation of evidence-based programs to improve health disparities in patient outcomes.

Most recently, Ogbolu’s efforts have been focused on addressing local health inequities, including improving the provision of care to culturally and linguistically diverse patients and addressing social determinants of health and social isolation.

Her passion for addressing global and local inequities resulted in her receiving a three-year, $950,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) as the principal investigator to develop the Global Learning for Health Equity Network, a program she co-directs with faculty in the UMB Center for Global Engagement. The national network is examining ways to learn from other countries to address health care inequities in local communities. It builds on Ogbolu’s work in applying lessons from Brazil to issues of family isolation in West Baltimore, utilizing a reciprocal innovation/global learning study model funded under a $683,000 grant also from RWJF. This earlier work was one of only six projects funded worldwide to address social isolation, a growing, global epidemic.

Drawing on her internationally recognized expertise in this area, she was invited to present “The Global Movement Toward Health Equity” plenary session at the 2021 Global Philanthropy Forum. The session focused on how health equity is imperative to advancing societal well-being and ensuring effective health systems as well as improving social determinants of health. It highlighted the importance of sharing knowledge and discovering how global solutions can be applied to problems domestically.

She also serves as the principal investigator on a $2.4 million Pathways for Health Equity grant, awarded in 2022 by the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, that has funded the development of the West Baltimore RICH (Reducing Isolation and Inequities in Cardiovascular Health) Collaborative, a partnership of 14 community- and faith-based, academic, and health care organizations in West Baltimore, including UMSON and two other UMB entities. The collaborative aims to address hypertension and social isolation in four ZIP codes, selected due to race-based disparities in the represented areas.

As chair of the Social Determinants of Health Taskforce of Baltimore City, formed in 2018, Ogbolu leads a group charged with identifying and examining the negative social factors that cause hardship for Baltimore residents and for developing and implementing solutions.

Fifteen years after becoming a nurse and while continuing to practice as a board-certified neonatal nurse practitioner, Ogbolu returned to nursing school and became a three-time UMSON graduate, earning her BSN, MS, and PhD from the school in 2004, 2005, and 2011, respectively.

While a graduate student, she received numerous honors, including being named a National Institutes of Health Fogarty Fellow. Her dissertation examined the impact of nurse work organization on newborn survival in 28 health care locations in Nigeria and illuminated the health challenges nurses and other health professionals face in attempting to address neonatal disparities in low-resource settings. At graduation, she was recognized with the “Outstanding PhD Student: Research, Service, and Practice Award.”

Ogbolu’s ability to apply research findings related to health equity to public policy was evident early in her academic career. Shortly after completing her PhD, she was awarded one of 12 highly competitive national Nurse Faculty Scholar Awards from RWJF.

With additional training through the National Institutes of Health in Dissemination and Implementation in Research in Health, her study (2013-17) on organizational cultural competency and its association with patient experiences in care examined organizational and contextual factors that drove or impeded adoption of cultural competency standards, evaluated the readiness of health care organizations to deliver culturally competent care, and assessed whether adoption of cultural competency standards was associated with improved patient reported experiences. This resulted in publications in major nursing journals derived from the study, and data from the study was subsequently used by the National Quality Forum (NQF) Disparities Standing Committee’s 2017 report “A Roadmap for Promoting Health Equity and Eliminating Disparities: The Four I’s for Health Equity.” Ogbolu was appointed a member of the influential Health Disparities Standing Committee for NQF in recognition of her contribution and expertise.

Ogbolu has authored and co-authored a number of articles that have appeared in the Annals of Global Health; Journal of Addictions Nursing; Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing: JOGNN; Neonatal Network; Bulletin of the World Health Organization; and The Journal of Nursing Research and Practice, among others.

Recognized as a leader in nursing, she has been invited to participate in national-level committees with the American Nurses Association (ANA), the National League for Nursing, and the National Quality Forum’s Disparities Standing Committee, where she served as the only nurse. She also serves on the ANA’s Subcommittee on Racism in Nursing Research.

Ogbolu has received numerous honors and awards, including as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, a fellow of the National Academies of Practice, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar. She also has received the Harriet Tubman Legacy in Maternal Child Health Nursing Award from the Minority Nurses Association of Maryland and a Governor’s Citation Award from former Gov. Martin O’Malley. She was the 2022 UMB Founders Week Public Servant of the Year, recognized as a 2015 UMB Champion of Excellence, won the 2014 UMB Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Outstanding Faculty Diversity Recognition Award, and was one of three faculty speakers at UMB’s inaugural Convocation in 2022.

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