Safiyyah Maryam Okoye

Safiyyah M. Okoye, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Graduate Nursing. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy, Dornsife School of Public Health. Okoye joined Drexel as part of the Drexel FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) program. Okoye completed her PhD in Nursing (2019) at Johns Hopkins University where she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar. Okoye’s goal as a public health researcher and nurse practitioner is to increase equity in health and function for socially and economically disadvantaged older adults. Her research examines socioeconomic and built environmental influences on physical function and disability among older adults with the purpose of informing individual, household, community and policy interventions to increase health equity. As a primary care nurse practitioner Okoye cared for a panel of patients with high prevalence of chronic disease (e.g., diabetes) and related conditions (e.g., poor sleep, functional disability) and became aware of the social and structural barriers faced by health care providers, patients and their families in co-managing health conditions. With her research, teaching and practice she seeks to transform health care in the United States to better serve the needs of patients and their families and to decrease health inequity.