Dr. Okechukwu is interested in how working conditions and work and family environments interact to shape the health and cancer prevention behaviors of disadvantaged populations. Her primary focus is on working class and immigrant communities with an emphasis on women who earn low wages. She is also interested in understanding how these communities balance work, family and health for themselves and their family members. A key part of this program of research is the pragmatic value of the results of epidemiologic studies, which are used to design and evaluate health-promoting interventions. 
 
She was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of California- San Francisco and the University of California-Berkeley. She obtained a Doctorate of Science (ScD) from the Harvard School of Public Health and Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN) and Masters of Public Health (MPH) degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, respectively. She has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.