Taking a Risk to Study Risk
The reality—and accompanying fear—really hit her at the airport, as she was saying goodbye to her family in Dakar, Senegal. Arriving at the airport, Khadidiatou Ndiaye left her family in the area where people see travelers off while she dealt with some confusion about her reservation. She straightened out the problems, went through customs and then returned to the area where she'd left her family.
“They had gone,” she recalls. “That's when I thought, ‘Uh oh, this is it. I'm really alone here. It was really scary.” 
Currently a graduate student in health communication in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Ndiaye began her academic journey as an undergraduate at Indiana University in Indianapolis ten years ago. Living with her brother and his wife eased her transition, but Ndiaye was on her own every day, trying to cope with a new culture.
“My English was not so great and I had little interaction with other students,” she says. “I missed my family horribly.”
But she was also very aware of the opportunity presented to her and what she wanted to do: develop and design more effective international projects through communication.
“When I was home, I was always aware of international initiatives,” she explains. “People come to Senegal with projects that have the best intentions. But they don't really understand the culture or the people and when the project fails they say, ‘We tried to help them but it didn't work.'”
After earning her bachelor's degree in Indiana, Ndiaye went to the University of New Mexico for her master's degree in communication. During her first week there, one of her professors mentioned that Senegal had one of the lowest HIV rates in Africa—something Ndiaye did not know and that spurred her to learn more.
“That's when I really started to see the need for this kind of study and focus on health communication,” she says. “I ended up doing my master's thesis on health communication strategies and specifically, why Senegal has such a low rate of HIV as compared to other African countries.”
Now pursuing a Ph.D., Ndiaye studies health communication and HIV prevention strategies from an ecological model; that is, from a societal and cultural context in both interpersonal and intrapersonal settings, which, she feels, is the key to effectiveness.
“You just cannot look at prevention strategies from one perspective,” she stresses. “You can give people skills but if the environment is not conducive to applying those skills, they really don't do much.”
One must look at priorities and act accordingly, Ndiaye believes. One of the factors in Senegal's low disease rate, she points out, is effective government leadership that recognized early on the implications of the epidemic. Because the country is in competent hands, they can focus on their health—especially when the health messages are delivered in a culturally and socially appropriate way.
“If people don't have enough food to eat, they're not going to be open to hearing about HIV prevention,” she explains. “In South Africa, for example, apartheid was the overwhelming priority for many, many years. Now that it is no longer the top priority, a prevention campaign would probably be much more effective.”
After completing her Ph.D., Ndiaye hopes to work in a university setting—in developing countries, especially in Africa. She knows that she will be among the most qualified in her field because of the training she's receiving here at Penn State, which was recently tied for first place in nationwide rankings of health communication programs (from the National Communication Association) with the University of Pennsylvania.
“The program is one of the best in the country,” she says. “My first semester was great—very challenging but great.”