Lance Okeke, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Population Health Sciences
Dr. Nwora Lance Okeke is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Population Health Sciences at Duke. Dr. Okeke completed his undergraduate studies at Xavier University of Louisiana in 2002, and completed his medical degree at Stanford School of Medicine in 2007. He also holds a Masters of Public Health degree from the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. He completed his residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Duke, and joined the ID division faculty in 2015.
In 2009, while a senior internal medicine resident, Dr. Okeke completed the HYC-sponsored clinical elective rotation at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. He has remained engaged as a collaborator and research mentor for ongoing Duke-led projects within the AMPATH consortium since then.
Dr. Okeke is an HIV health services investigator, and his current work focuses on two areas: the optimization of HIV care delivery strategies to better address co-morbid conditions, particularly cardiovascular disease risk among persons with HIV and in the utilization of healthcare informatics to quantify HIV acquisition risk among clients and subsequently inform population-level strategies for disseminating HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). His work is currently supported by an NIH K23 Career Development Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
Although Dr. Okeke’s work to date has primarily focused on the HIV epidemic in the US South, he looks forward to leveraging the growing expertise in reciprocal innovation developed by HYC and affiliates to foster a bi-directional pipeline for HIV implementation research in HIV-related cardiovascular disease and HIV prevention. Dr. Okeke currently serves as the Associate Program Director for the Duke Infectious Diseases program, Associate Director for Duke Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Core and the Vice Chief for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Duke Infectious Diseases.