Publications by authors named "Leonore Okwara"

Background: No disease-specific therapy currently exists for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a progressive cardiogenetic condition conferring elevated risk for ventricular arrhythmias, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death. Emerging gene therapies have the potential to fill this gap. However, little is known about how adults with ARVC, or any other inherited cardiomyopathy or arrhythmia syndrome, appraise the risks and benefits of gene therapy research and which considerations may influence their decisions about clinical trial participation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: African American women below screening age disproportionately face greater mortality from breast cancer relative to peers of other races and African American women of screening age. The current study examines breast cancer knowledge and health information seeking of African American women below screening age.

Methods: We collected survey data from 99 African American women below screening age on their breast cancer knowledge and health information seeking behaviors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The field of implementation science has devoted increasing attention to optimizing the fit of evidence-based interventions to the organizational settings in which they are delivered. Institutionalization of health promotion into routine organizational operations is one way to achieve this. However, less is known about how to maximize fit and achieve institutionalization, particularly in settings outside of the healthcare system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

African American women are disproportionately impacted by breast cancer, including triple-negative disease, at a young age. Yet most public health research in breast cancer focuses on women of screening age. This study identified the specific breast cancer educational needs of African American women below the recommended screening age.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although web-based psychoeducational programs may be an efficient, accessible, and scalable option for improving participant well-being, they seldom are sustained beyond trial publication. Implementation evaluations may help optimize program uptake, but few are performed. When the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched the web-based psychoeducational workshop Building Better Caregivers (BBC) for informal caregivers of veterans nationwide in 2013, the workshop did not enroll as many caregivers as anticipated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Vulnerable populations face significant challenges in navigating the care continuum, ranging from diagnosis of illness to linkage and retention in healthcare. Understanding how best to move individuals within these vulnerable populations across the care continuum is critical to improving their health. A large body of literature has focused on evaluation of implementation of various health-focused interventions in this population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Prior studies have described racial disparities in the quality of care for persons with HIV infection, but it is unknown if these disparities extend to common comorbid conditions. To inform implementation of interventions to reduce disparities in HIV care, we examined racial variation in a set of quality measures for common comorbid conditions among Veterans in care for HIV in the United States.

Method: The cohort included 23,974 Veterans in care for HIV in 2013 (53.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Autism spectrum disorders are difficult for older adolescents and young adults as impaired social communication affects the transition to adult life. d-Cycloserine, a partial glycine agonist at the N-methyl-d-aspartic acid receptor, was tested in a double-blind randomized trial in 20 older adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders using two dosing strategies (50 mg daily versus 50 mg weekly) for 8 weeks with a 2-week follow-up after discontinuation. d-Cycloserine caused statistically and clinically significant improvement with no differentiation between dosing strategies on the Social Responsiveness Scale and the Aberrant Behavior Checklist before and after d-cycloserine administration.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have core impairments in social communication as well as the presence of repetitive, stereotypic behaviors and restricted interests. Older adolescents and young adults are particularly impacted by these deficits. Preclinical data implicate glutamatergic dysfunction in the pathophysiology of ASDs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Although many studies have shown that short falls by children rarely result in serious injury, no recent study in the United States has assessed the prevalence and the characteristics of such falls. Because the history of a short fall often is given in the instance of suspected child abuse, data addressing the characteristics, the frequency, and the severity of such falls would assist in abuse investigations.

Methods: Anonymous questionnaires were distributed at primary care offices to parents of children younger than 5 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Notice

Message: fwrite(): Write of 34 bytes failed with errno=28 No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 272

Backtrace:

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_write_close(): Failed to write session data using user defined save handler. (session.save_path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Unknown

Line Number: 0

Backtrace: