September 11, 2026 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
The Southern Regional Education Board has selected Arielle N’Diaye as the recipient of their Doctoral Dissertation Award to support the health promotion, education, and behavior (HPEB) student during the dissertation phase of her doctoral program. In addition to a $20,000 stipend, this award also offers research project and professional development funding. With interests in sexual and reproductive health, N’Diaye will use a reproductive justice-based approach to examine the contraceptive counseling and use experiences of Black women in the southern United States.
“I am especially interested in contraception, abortion, fertility, LGBTQ health, and sexually transmitted diseases across the life course,” N’Diaye says.
After growing up in New Jersey, N’Diaye studied sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Her interest in sexual and reproductive health began during her M.S. in Public Health program at Sweden’s Lund University where she was introduced to the delivery and accessibility of these health services in countries around the world. With an initial focus on the experiences of people living with HIV, she completed her master’s thesis on the topic and made plans to continue building her expertise in this area with a doctoral degree.
N’Diaye chose USC’s Ph.D. in HPEB program due to the department’s emphasis on teaching students how to engage in research that promotes health equity. Though she began the program with her focus still on HIV, N’Diaye broadened her interests after taking classes on LGBTQ health, social theory and maternal-child health.
“These courses drove my interest in understanding how populations marginalized at the intersection of race and sexual orientation experience sexual and reproductive services in the U.S. South,” N’Diaye says. “Methodologically, these classes also introduced me to rights and justice-based approaches to research.”
Outside of the classroom, N’Diaye has gained experience as a graduate research assistant in her department with Marta Bornstein and the South Carolina SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality. In addition to her SREB award, N’Diaye is the recipient of a SPARC grant from the USC Office of the Vice President for Research and an Emerging Scholars grant from the Society of Family Planning. She has also spent a summer as a Fellow at the University of Utah’s ASCENT Summer Research Training Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Justice.
Across these experiences, N’Diaye has been supported by Bornstein and HPEB associate professor Emily Mann, whom she considers her primary mentors.
“They are both experts in sexual and reproductive health research and have shown me that research is most impactful when it is collaborative and interdisciplinary,” N’Diaye says. “They have taught me to approach research and writing as an iterative process, effectively write grant proposals, and disseminate study findings through peer-reviewed publications. They have also supported me in prioritizing life-work balance, with a focus on ensuring that my health and well-being is not at odds with my training and professional development. This approach is helping to ensure that I create sustainable habits that will serve me throughout my career in academia.”
In pursuit of that career, N’Diaye plans to secure a postdoctoral fellowship after graduating from USC. Ultimately, she hopes to teach, mentor, and conduct research with real-world applications.
“I would like to produce research that can be easily accessed and used by clinicians,
legislators, and communities to improve the sexual and reproductive outcomes of marginalized
populations – and advocate for the resources needed to make sexual and reproductive
care more equitable in the U.S.,” she says. “My Ph.D. will help me achieve this through
mentorship and hands-on research experiences, including collecting and analyzing survey
and interview data for my dissertation.”
