Priscilla O Okunji

Howard University | HU · College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences

Background The NIH Diversity Administrative Supplement is a funding mechanism that provides support for diverse early-stage researchers. There is limited guidance on how to apply for these awards. Purpose We describe perspectives of NIH program/diversity officers and university research administrators offering recommendations for diversity supplem...

Background The National Institutes of Health supports professional development of diverse researchers through diversity supplements. Limited awareness and understanding of the application process have hindered utilization of this funding mechanism. Purpose We describe perspectives and recommendations of mentee and mentor recipients of diversity su...

The paucity of data for African Americans (AAs) participating in health-related research (e.g., genomic health research) is often attributed to difficulty in recruitment and retention. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, particularly in AA communities, has amplified the problem. Reasons for not participatin...

p> The paucity of data for African Americans (AAs) participating in health-related research (e.g., genomic health research) is often attributed to difficulty in recruitment and retention. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, particularly in AA communities, has amplified the problem. Reasons for not participa...

p> The paucity of data for African Americans (AAs) participating in health-related research (e.g., genomic health research) is often attributed to difficulty in recruitment and retention. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, particularly in AA communities, has amplified the problem. Reasons for not participa...

Introduction: The Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM), is particularly designed to assist institutions and learning professionals to decide if their evaluation methods are effective in providing valid feedback as studies have reported that previous evaluation models have not done so effectively. LTEM is composed of eight levels starting from...

In the United States, Heart Failure (HF) was the main cause of 1 out of 8 deaths in 2017 with a countrywide cost assessed at $30.7 billion in 2012. Current statistics have shown that HF increase with age and more than 10% among people older than 70 years old with 1.4 million under 60 years and more than 5% of HF is found among individuals age 60-69...

Non-adherence to medication and outpatient follow-up care are recognizable problems and may be the most challenging aspect of treatment in patients with schizophrenia. Interventions to improve adherence include psychosocial therapy and education, offering and beginning antipsychotic long-acting injections, electronic reminders, service-based interv...

Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a chronic condition with periods of moderate to severe mood swings lasting for weeks or months. Mania escalates abnormal behavior, while depression is filled with thoughts of hopelessness. Unfortunately, studies have shown that individuals diagnosed with BD have higher illness severity than the general population, and there...

Chronic disease is the leading cause of deaths worldwide. Lifestyle choices, such as physical inactivity, poor nutrition, inadequate stress management, alcohol abuse, and tobacco smoking, are the major contributors to chronic disease development. Approximately 75% of Americans aged 65 or older suffer from more than one chronic disease, with the mos...

Objective: Although the advancement of electronic health records (EHRs) utilization in clinical research may allow for feasibility studies, and identify patients who are eligible for enrollment in clinical trials, it is a complex process to conduct clinical and translational research studies by merging data from different EMRs. Barriers and challen...

Objectives: The paucity of data for African-Americans (AAs) participating in health-related research (e.g., genomic research in nutrition) is often attributed to difficulty in recruitment and retention. The reasons for such unwillingness to participate remains unclear and could account for health disparities. Studies demonstrate that AAs may be mo...

Just as nurse educators are continuously challenged to stay current in today’s complex healthcare, the environment continues to rapidly expand in the field of nursing informatics. An excerpt from the 2016 National Nursing Informatics Deep Dive conference very well highlighted the urgency as follows: "Nurse educators’ expectation ranges from electro...

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, after Alzheimer’s disease, affecting approximately one million persons aged 65 years and above in the United States. Parkinson's disease represents a major medical concern for health professionals, national healthcare bodies and a heavy burden for caregivers....

Background: The leaf, fruit ,and bark of Momordica charantia (MC)(Common name. Bitter Melon). (Cucurbitaceae) has been used extensively in folk medicine as a remedy for diabetes. Biological and pharmacological activities attributed to different parts and extracts of these plants include anti-HIV, wound healing, anti-helmintic, anti-genotoxicity, la...

Background: Patients with myocardial infarction reportedly have different outcomes on discharge according to hospital characteristics. In the present study, we evaluated the differences between urban teaching hospitals (UTH) and non-teaching hospitals (NTH), discharged in 2012. We also investigated on the outcomes. Methods: Sample of 117,808 subjec...

The effect of medication errors on patient quality care and safety is a critical ongoing concern requiring solutions. Although medication safety has been a concern of all healthcare professions, registered nurses play an important role in medication safety as patients’ advocates. A cross sectional study with structured questionnaire on common FDI f...

With the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) by acute care hospitals, research in biomedical field has become increasingly data-intensive as investigators are rapidly using large, complex, and diverse datasets. Big data to knowledge (BD2K) focus is to enhance the advances in data acquisition, analytics, policy, and training which are critic...

Despite previous studies indication that Myocardial Infarction mortality rate decreases considerable after treatment, evidences point to the fact that decrease in mortality rate is only short time of thirty day duration and there is no significant change in long term mortality rate of myocardial infarction incident patients. Any significant change...

About 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV, and 21% of these persons do not know they are infected. African Americans are 8.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV infection, as compared to the White population in 2008. Women account for a 25% of all new HIV/AIDS cases, with approximately 65% having contracted the infection via heterosexu...

Hospitals with a higher proportion of registered nurses (RNs) or baccalaureate prepared nurses are associated with lower mortality rates in acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, and stroke. Others include lower rates in decubitus ulcers, failure to rescue, and postoperative deep vei...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Chronic heart failure (CHF) has recently been known to be one of the most important public health concerns and a challenge to cardiovascular disease researchers, having increasing incidence and prevalence rates of CHF in industrialized countries. Although there are several sources of data on the congestive heart failure in se...

To evaluate if patient characteristics would have significant effects on outcomes for inpatients' Myocardial Infarction (MI) with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) admitted to Non-Federal Hospitals. We used data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project under the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HCUP_AHRQ, 2006) and data were retrospectively...

This article presents an exploration of the development, evaluation and program review of a newly implemented online undergraduate RN (Registered Nurses) to BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) degree program. This process included the incorporation of informatics into the new curriculum, development of a program brochure and flyers for student rec...

This paper assesses whether there is a significant difference in socioeconomic condition (income), insurance status, and Length of Stay (LOS) of inpatients diagnosed with diabetic myocardial infarction in teaching vs nonteaching hospitals. A retrospective data analysis of discharges was conducted from the 2008 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Projec...

Background: The effects of blood pressure on outcomes of inpatients with cardiovascular related diseases in teaching and non teaching hospitals are not well known. In this study we are investigating the prevalence of hypertension and other co-morbidities on the length of stay and transfers of inpatients’ with heart attack in teaching and non teachi...

Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and globally. African Americans experience significant differences in lung cancer incidence and mortality. Smoking is the single greatest risk for lung cancer, making smoking cessation programs a potentially fruitful approach for reducing the risk of lung cancer. Despite c...

The purpose of the study was to assess whether patient transfer demonstrated health-care disparities in patients with myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes mellitus who had been admitted to non-federal hospitals in 2006. This was a secondary data analyses. Retrospective data was extracted from the 2006 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (H...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess whether certain patient and hospital characteristics would have significant effects on the length of stay for patients admitted to non-federal hospitals with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and Myocardial Infarction (MI) using a comparative data analysis. Methods: This was a retrospective data analysis of inpa...

Background: There has been an increasing prevalence of myocardial infarction (MI) inpatients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Relatively very little research has been reported on the health services outcomes differences between teaching and non teaching hospitals with regards to length of stay (LOS) of inpatients with both MI and T2D. This study examine...

BACKGROUND: Validated estimates of costs, length of stay, and mortality rates are necessary for the treatment and prevention of acute myocardial infarction in patient admitted to federal hospitals. Estimates based on data from few healthcare institutions may not be generalizable to all hospitals. HYPOTHESIS: To assess the hypothesis that there will...

This study is a database analysis of health services outcomes for diabetic myocardial infarction inpatients admitted in non federal hospitals. Relatively little or nothing is known about the outcomes of hospital inpatients with both MI (Myocardial Infarction) and T2D (Type 2 Diabetes). To evaluate the effects of patient and hospital characteristics...

A total of 373 stool samples comprising 38 watery stool and 335 normal formed samples, collected from primary school children in Enugu State, Nigeria, were processed for the presence of Cryptosporidium oocysts. The formalin-methylene blue staining techniques were employed for the concentration and identification of the Oocysts in each sample. The r...

A total of 413 soft, loose or watery stool specimens from patients with acute diarrhoea were screened for presence of Cryptosporidium oocysts. Safranin-methylene blue staining technique was used for detecting Cryptosporidium oocysts in the stool samples. The oocysts were identified in 52 (12.5 per cent) of the samples, while 69 samples (16.7 per ce...

Studies were conducted on the antimicrobial activity of four Nigerian plants used in ethnomedicine: Anthocleista djalonsensis (Okpo nkwu), Icacina tricantha (Amirami), Mitracarpus scaber (Ogwu ugwu) and Newbouldia laevis (Okwu mai), all from Ikwuano-Umuahia Local Government of Abia State (Former Imo State). Their leaf extracts were obtained by cold...