Ghanaian doctor Nancy Abu-Bonsrah has made history, becoming the first Black woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins University’s neurosurgery program. She pursued her clinical interests in neurosurgery, neurotrauma and neurosurgical capacity building in low-and-middle-income countries. Abu-Bonsrah also earned a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2022.
“12 years @HopkinsMedicine came to an end last weekend, surrounded by family. Surreal that I’m done,” Abu-Bonsrah celebrated her graduation on X (formerly Twitter)
During her time at Hopkins, Abu-Bonsrah was awarded numerous accolades. She won the Neurosurgeon Research and Education Foundation (NREF) Directed Residency Scholarship and the Hopkins Neurosurgery Department Irving J. Sherman Traveling Fellowship Award in 2021. She received the Association for Academic Surgery/Association for Academic Surgery Foundation (AAS/AASF) Global Surgery Research Award in 2022 and the Hopkins Neurosurgery Department Louise Eisenhardt Award in 2023. Abu-Bonsrah has co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications.
Born in Ghana, Abu-Bonsrah moved to the United States when she was 15. She studied chemistry and biochemistry at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland and then joined Johns Hopkins University to study medicine. Abu-Bonsrah became the first doctor in her extended family. Her drive to study neurosurgery came from shadowing a neurosurgeon during a visit to Ghana while a junior in college.
In 2017, Abu-Bonsrah became the first black female to be accepted to train as a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The prestigious program is highly competitive, accepting just two to five residents. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine is the birthplace of the medical discipline of neurological surgery and has produced notable alumni like Dr. Ben Carson. The Flexner Report describes Hopkins as the model for American medical education.
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Abu-Bonsrah is now headed to work at UPMC Williamsport Hospital. She hopes to come back to Ghana throughout her career to help build sustainable surgical infrastructure.
“I am very much interested in providing medical care in underserved settings, specifically surgical care. I hope to be able to go back to Ghana over the course of my career to help in building sustainable surgical infrastructure. I want to be remembered for serving my community, whether it is through providing quality surgical care or helping mentor the next generation of surgeons,” Abu-Bonsrah said about her plans.
