Kheri Wandji PhD, MSN, MBA, NEA-BC, PMHRN-BC, CNL, VHA-CM

Biography

Kheri Wandji is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). A psychiatric nurse and population health scientist, Dr. Wandji’s research focuses on developing, testing and implementing digital health innovations to expand access to substance use disorder (SUD) care in underserved rural communities.

He is the Principal Investigator of RISE-Rural (Recovery-Informed Support and Empowerment for Rural Communities), a proposed scalable digital peer support video library currently under NIH review, designed to reduce disparities in access to evidence-based treatment for opioid and stimulant use disorders in rural South Carolina and beyond.

His work integrates community-engaged methods, implementation science frameworks and culturally responsive approaches to ensure that digital tools are both effective and sustainable in real-world settings.

Dr. Wandji earned his PhD in Population Health from the University of South Carolina, his MSN from Seton Hall University and his MBA from Western Kentucky University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University as part of the NIH/Fogarty-funded Global Health Emerging Scholars program, where he led an implementation science project to improve health system communication in rural Uganda. He also trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through the NIH/NIDA-funded SUD Ventures program in biomedical innovation and entrepreneurship.

His scholarship has been recognized through awards such as the SAMHSA Minority Fellowship, Jonas Nursing and Veterans Healthcare Scholarship and NIH/Fogarty Global Health Emerging Scholar award. He has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications on racial and gender disparities in SUD treatment, structural and socio-ecological barriers to care, global health system innovations and the impact of climate change on population mental health in Kampala, Uganda.