When you ask Dr. Ogechi “Cynthia” Onyeka about her work on The Black and Living with OCD (BLOC) Project, her entire face lights up.
Onyeka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and an International OCD Foundation Grant Recipient, having won the Jenike Young Investigator Award in 2024.
The BLOC Project is the one which Onyeka received the IOCDF Grant for, and it is, as Onyeka admits “quite ambitious.”
“I’m really excited to be a part of it and to see what we find,” Onyeka said.
As Onyeka describes, the project is a mixed-method study, which examines the lived experiences of Black Americans with OCD to understand factors such as how OCD symptoms show up and what might impact them.
“Which is historically underrepresented when it comes to OCD research,” Onyeka noted.
As Onyeka explained, while there is a vast amount of research on OCD symptoms, their impact, and how they appear, the findings may not apply as widely due to the limited diversity of the participants.
By increasing the research participant pool to include more minorities and traditionally underrepresented groups, Onyeka explained, “the findings that we do have can be more generalized to folks across the board and not just in one majority population.”
“One of the greatest things I hope to achieve through this research is increasing our understanding of what OCD looks like across these underrepresented populations,” Onyeka said. Through her research, Onyeka seeks to understand how symptom expression and presentation may vary due to sociocultural influences and how methodologies such as community-based participatory research can ensure that different perspectives and experiences are validated for all groups.
The community-based approach is essential to Onyeka’s work, playing as she describes, “a very big role.”
“One of the really important aspects of my program of research [is] using these methods, particularly by way of convening a community advisory board,” Onyeka said.
“So these are stakeholders who either have lived experiences with OCD and they’re also in the Black community or work with individuals who have OCD or may have family members with OCD,” Onyeka described.
These stakeholders help inform everything at “every stage of the research process,” Onyeka detailed.
From the questions focus group participants receive to the content that will ultimately be posted on The BLOC Project website, the input of these stakeholders is critical.
Onyeka stressed the importance of this community involvement.
“At least from what I’ve known anecdotally… a lot of people don’t know about OCD in terms of what it looks like, like who experiences it, what happens when you do present with symptoms and how you can get treatment and care,” Onyeka explained.
“Engaging the community can be really, really helpful in just sharing this critical information,” Onyeka said.
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