Pharmacy Student Measures Impact of Stigma in Sickle Cell Disease
- Sep 29, 2026
While working as a pharmacist in Nigeria, Ayobami Aiyeolemi observed that patients taking the same medication could have very different health outcomes depending on social factors that also influenced their healthcare.
“I began to appreciate how different factors like transportation needs and social support could really change health outcomes for patients,” said Aiyeolemi, a pharmaceutical sciences graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. “Patients have non-medical challenges that we need to address so that their medications work for them.”
Aiyeolemi received a 2026 PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Value Assessment and Health Outcomes Research for his work focused on understanding and measuring stigma in sickle cell disease.
Aiyeolemi’s interest in these social determinants of health led him to pursue his Ph.D. in health outcomes research at UT. Among the many social factors that influence health, stigma remains one of the most difficult to measure and one of the most damaging for people living with sickle cell disease — a group of inherited blood disorders in which misshapen red blood cells clog blood vessels, causing severe pain, organ damage and anemia.
“My country, Nigeria, has the highest burden of sickle cell disease in the world, so although I’m working here in the U.S., I’m hoping that someday my work can translate to those people in Nigeria and also people living with sickle cell disease all over the world,” Aiyeolemi said.
For individuals with sickle cell disease, stigma poses a significant barrier for care. More than 90% of Americans with the disease are Black and may encounter racial bias and misconceptions about pain management, such as being mislabeled as drug-seeking due to chronic pain from the condition.
Aiyeolemi will work with sickle cell patients to measure that stigma and create a measuring scale, which he hopes will help researchers, clinicians and health systems better understand how stigma affects patients’ health, quality of life and access to care.
Aiyeolemi hopes to eventually build a research program that centers on conditions affecting marginalized populations and the impact of social determinants like stigma.
“I’d like to become an authority in that area of research,” he said.
