Overview
Brandon Knettel, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the Duke Center for Global Mental Health and an Associate Professor with a primary appointment in the Duke University School of Nursing and a secondary appointment in the Duke Global Health Institute. His areas of specialization are global mental health and health behavior, with a focus on care engagement, nurse-led models of care, stigma reduction, and mental health support for people living with HIV. At DGHI, he teaches a course in Global Mental Health for the Master's of Science in Global Health program.
Dr. Knettel’s international projects are primarily located in Moshi, Tanzania, where he completed a one-year VECD Fogarty Global Health Fellowship to evaluate a community health worker program for HIV care engagement. He also completed a NIMH K08 Career Development Award to develop a brief telehealth counseling intervention to address suicidal ideation and improve care engagement among people living with HIV and was co-PI of a DGHI pilot grant to improve the understanding of cancer-related stigma in Tanzania.
Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Scholarly Works
Development of an Opioid Stigma Scale for People Living With Chronic Pain.
Conference Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · June 2026 PurposeHigh levels of stigma among patients with chronic pain contribute to negative psychological well-being. Existing measures have not focused on opioid stigma among individuals with chronic pain who may have legitimate need for opioid therapy. ... Full text CiteFrom research to practice: a qualitative study examining the integration of telehealth-based suicide prevention in HIV care in Tanzania.
Journal article AIDS Care · May 28, 2026 Despite the life-saving potential of mental health interventions, their scalability and integration within healthcare systems present significant challenges, particularly in low-resource global settings. This study investigated scaling IDEAS for Hope, a te ... Full text Link to item CiteDevelopment and psychometric properties of a general cancer stigma scale.
Journal article International journal of cancer · May 2026 Cancer stigma negatively impacts diagnosis, quality of life, and survival outcomes, yet stigma reduction efforts are hindered by the lack of a valid and universal scale to measure cancer stigma. This study aimed to develop and validate a global cancer stig ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Adapting a telehealth intervention for suicide prevention among patients with Alcohol Use Disorder in Tanzania
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2026 - 2029Evaluating the Effectiveness of Sauti ya Vijana (The Voice of Youth), a Mental Health and Life Skills Intervention to Improve HIV Outcomes Among Young People Living with HIV in Tanzania
ResearchPsychologist · Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health · 2021 - 2027Building Research Capacity for Mental Health Nursing in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre · 2023 - 2025View All Grants