Onyi Okeke, MD

Onyi Okeke, MD recently graduated from Consultation-Liaison (C-L) Psychiatry Fellowship at Yale University. During her fellowship training, she was accepted into the Connecticut State Medical Society’s Young Physician Leadership Curriculum. The program provides young physicians with tools to develop leadership, physician advocacy and is designed to enhance the physicians’ abilities to influence practice and policy development. She completed her first three years of general psychiatry residency training at Georgetown University. She was awarded a Clinical Research Fellowship at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) for her 4th year of residency. At NIMH she collaborated with members of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to launch, "A Longitudinal Study of COVID-19 Sequelae and Immunity". NIMH's contribution is to elucidate the neuropsychiatric consequences of surviving COVID-19. While at NIMH, she served on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center Ethics Committee and the NIMH Disparities Team. The goal of the Disparities team is to increase mental health disparities research at NIMH. Dr. Okeke completed her undergraduate training at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and then attended Rutgers, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital for medical school. As an undergraduate and medical student, she mentored and tutored historically underserved and underrepresented students pursuing careers in the STEM fields. She also volunteered at a medical mission health fair in Nigeria, to teach community members how to manage chronic medical problems. Dr. Okeke’s experience in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, has given her specialty training in multi-disciplinary communication, psychoeducation, collaboration, and advocacy. She is pursuing a subsequent fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to learn the skills required to address the communication gap between primary care providers, community members, and psychiatrists. Her career mission is to improve access to high-quality mental health care and reduce behavioral health disparities, across the life span, through effective system's based practice.