Minelva Donato, MD, PhD

Dr. Minelva Donato is a board-certified Family Medicine physician at Just Health Family Medicine in Ridgefield, practicing since 2018. She began her medical training in 2006 in the Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology PhD program at the University of Minnesota Medical School, later entering the school's combined MD/PhD program, and completed her PhD in 2013 and her MD in 2015. Her research on the immune response to Salmonella infection earned her the UMN Foundation J Jacob Kaplan Award.

She had planned to specialize in infectious disease or rheumatology, but coursework in integrative medicine, including Ayurveda, lifestyle medicine and Reiki, shifted her toward treating each patient as a whole person. Training at the North Memorial/University of Minnesota Family Medicine Residency Program from 2015 to 2018, she found an enjoyment of teaching, which led to her induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society and the 2019 Resident Gold Foundation Humanism and Excellence in Teaching Award.