Cam Young with MFAT Divisional Manager Americas Division James Waite (left) and US Embassy Chargé d’affaires David Gehrenbeck at the Fulbright awards ceremony.
Otago Fulbright recipient Cam Young can’t wait to have his life changed forever by his upcoming year in the United States.
This talented Pacific tauira says he is “very humbled and proud” to have received a 2025 Fulbright NZ Science and Innovation Graduate Award, announced last month.
“It is an incredible opportunity to learn from talented scholars and community experts in the USA, and I look forward to having my life changed irrevocably by this experience.”
Born and raised in Hawke’s Bay, Cam graduated from Otago with a BSc (Hons First Class) in 2022 and is partway through an MB ChB and a PhD in the Department of Anatomy at the Dunedin campus. His PhD is focused on diet during pregnancy and its association with chronic disease risk and progression, in both the mother and child.
Cam says his love for research began during his undergraduate time in Anatomy and he hopes to continue down the path of becoming a clinician-researcher.
In October, he will travel to the United States as a visiting student researcher to complete 12 months of his PhD there.
“I want to mihi to my family, friends, mentors, and supervisors, without whom I would not have reached this point in my journey. It is a privilege to be moulded by those around me and I hope that I can bring back the learnings from this Fulbright trip to effect meaningful change in the communities I come from.”
Celebrating with Cam Young (centre) at the Fulbright awards ceremony in Wellington in June were (from left) his aunties, Debbie Young and Taime Pareanga Samuel QSM, and his mother, Marjorie Whitesand Young.
For the first six months, Cam will be based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, learning epigenetic techniques with a lab specialising in molecular biochemistry. He will then spend six months affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, working in their southwestern sites (Arizona and New Mexico) to deliver health promotion programmes within the Navajo Nation.
Cam says his research primarily takes a biomedical approach by using animal models to assess the effect of specific macronutrients during pregnancy and their association with disease after birth and into adulthood.
He is also interested in the broader context of maternal nutrition and the sociopolitical and cultural factors that influence the way that women select and maintain "healthy" diets, as well as their dietary behaviours and food-related beliefs.
“With my findings, I hope to influence the way our health workforce engage with wāhine and whānau during pregnancy – with compassion, understanding, and cultural responsiveness at the forefront of their care.”
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