Cornelia B. Wakeman, MSN, FNP-C is a Family Nurse Practitioner in the Department of Pulmonary, Allergy, Sleep and Critical Care Medicine at Boston Medical Center and Assistant Professor at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She also serves as Co-Director of BMC’s Tobacco Treatment Center. Cornelia is dedicated to advancing equitable, evidence-based care for individuals with complex pulmonary and sleep disorders, as well as tobacco and substance use disorders.
Within the Sleep Medicine Program, Cornelia provides comprehensive care for patients with sleep-disordered breathing, complex sleep apnea and chronic respiratory failure. Her clinical work emphasizes individualized treatment plans that address both physiologic contributors—such as obesity and cardiopulmonary comorbidities—and social determinants that affect diagnosis, adherence, and long-term outcomes. Recognizing the strong association between obesity and moderate to severe OSA, Cornelia has played a key role in developing and implementing a clinical pathway to prescribe Zepbound® (tirzepatide) for eligible patients with moderate to severe OSA. This pathway integrates sleep medicine, pulmonary care, and weight management strategies to ensure safe prescribing, insurance navigation, and longitudinal follow-up—particularly for patients from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who face barriers to specialty obesity treatment. Her work supports emerging, evidence-based pharmacologic approaches as adjuncts to traditional OSA therapies, expanding treatment options for patients with refractory or complex disease.
Cornelia’s clinical interests center on caring for patient populations who experience substance use and tobacco use disorders. Her work has focused on developing and implementing tailored interventions that reach socioeconomically disadvantaged populations and reduce healthcare disparities. She has particular expertise in integrating tobacco treatment into acute and outpatient care settings, leveraging system-level strategies to improve access, engagement, and sustained cessation.
Her scholarship reflects a sustained commitment to innovative, scalable approaches to tobacco treatment and chronic disease management. She is a co-author of a six-year analysis published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research (Flores et al., 2024) evaluating the sustainability of an opt-out, electronic health record–based tobacco treatment consult service at a large safety-net hospital, demonstrating the durability and impact of systems-based interventions in routine clinical care. In JMIR Formative Research (Shusterman et al., 2023), she contributed to a feasibility and acceptability study of a financial incentives program to promote smoking cessation among recently hospitalized individuals—highlighting strategies to engage high-risk patients during critical transitions of care.
In Cancer Causes & Control (Kathuria et al., 2022), she co-authored work examining hospitalization as an opportunity to engage underserved individuals in shared decision-making for lung cancer screening, reinforcing her commitment to preventive care and equitable access. Her contributions to BMC Pulmonary Medicine (Kearney et al., 2022) include a mixed-methods study evaluating a longitudinal nurse practitioner and community health worker intervention to address social determinants of health and support chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) self-management.
Across her clinical, programmatic, and academic roles, Cornelia advances patient-centered models that integrate pulmonary and sleep medicine, obesity management, tobacco treatment, and attention to social determinants of health. Through her leadership at Boston Medical Center, she continues to shape innovative pathways that expand access to care, promote health equity, and improve outcomes for medically and socially complex populations.