About the author
Sade Kosoko-Lasaki, MD, MSPH, MBA is associate vice provost for Health Sciences, professor of surgery (ophthalmology) and professor of preventive medicine and public health at Creighton University. She is co-founder and co-director of Creighton's Center for Promoting Health and Health Equity (CPHHE), a multiple national award winner and an internationally renowned researcher in minority health with a focus on increasing the health care workforce.
Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki has led Creighton University's participation in the training and education of a diverse group of faculty and students at the pre-collegiate and collegiate levels in Nebraska which has resulted in the award of several multi-million-dollar research initiatives. In addition, her efforts helped achieve the designation of the Creighton School of Medicine as a Center of Excellence in Minority Education from 2005 to 2008.
Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki leads Creighton's Office of Health Sciences-Multicultural and Community Affairs through programs such as the pre-Medical, pre-Dental Post Baccalaureate programs and the pre-Pharmacy and Health Professions Pre-matriculation programs; the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP); the Health Professions Pipeline Program; Cultural Proficiency Seminars, Community Outreach Primary Care (COPC) and other Health Disparities Initiatives with a focus on community-based participatory research.
Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki has built collaborative relationships locally, nationally and worldwide while serving as a community/academic leader in the Omaha area. She oversees the recruitment of disadvantaged students to Creighton's health science schools, and mentors these students to retain them. Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki has lectured nationally and internationally on cultural proficiency and health disparity issues, focusing on the promotion of "pipeline programs" that prepare and support disadvantaged students from fourth grade through health professional schools, so the students can become successful health care providers.
As an ophthalmologist with a public health degree, Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki is passionate about training and educating individuals in developing countries on blindness prevention, specifically Vitamin A deficiency, which is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and a major public health problem throughout the world. She is also a subspecialist in the treatment of glaucoma. She has served as a consultant to UNICEF, USAID and Helen Keller International in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and the Philippines.
Since 1986, Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki, a clinician and surgeon, has researched the prevalence of glaucoma in blacks in St. Lucia, West Indies. With a focus on detecting and treating glaucoma — the most common cause of blindness in African Americans and Hispanics – she has initiated health fairs and screenings throughout the Washington DC metropolitan area, in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, the U.S. Virgin Islands and in the Dominican Republic. In 2001, she created a program for blindness prevention at Creighton University entitled, "Preventing Glaucoma Blindness in Nebraska: A Creighton University Initiative," which targeted individuals at risk for glaucoma blindness in Omaha and surrounding states.
Dr. Kosoko-Lasaki has written over a hundred and fifty publications in peer-reviewed journals and has co-authored "Maintaining the Target Intraocular Pressure: African American Glaucoma Specialist" a textbook, "Cultural Proficiency in Addressing Health Disparities and a recently a book titled "Diversity and Inclusion in a More Perfect University: HS-MACA 20-Year History of Success."
She is married to Dr. Gbolahan Lasaki, a petroleum engineer and is blessed with three children, three step children and four grandchildren.