St. Paul, April 29, 2025 – The Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP) has selected Dannah Nephew as the recipient of the 2025 Medical Student Leadership Award. This award is presented annually to a medical student who demonstrates leadership in family medicine.
Nephew is a third-year medical student at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she has distinguished herself through an extraordinary combination of academic excellence, community engagement and unwavering commitment to health equity. A proud descendent of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, Nephew is pursuing a career in family medicine with a strong desire to serve rural and Indigenous communities across Minnesota. She has dual honors degrees in biology and biochemistry with a minor in deaf studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Nephew demonstrates both intellectual rigor and a deep curiosity about inclusive, culturally responsive care. At every stage of her training, Nephew has consistently translated knowledge into action, leading initiatives that promote equitable health care, trauma-informed care and access to life-saving interventions such as naloxone administration.
Beyond her academic achievements, Nephew is a powerful advocate and community leader. As vice president and co-founder of the Minnesota Doctors for Health Equity student chapter, a board member of Minnesota Doctors for Health Equity and a key figure in the University’s Professional Student Government, she excels as a leader. From mentoring high school students at Denfeld High to sewing ribbon skirts for incoming Native medical students, her work centers cultural resilience and belonging. Her compassionate, nonjudgmental approach to patient care, her deep awareness of social determinants of health and her ability to lead with humility and inclusion all speak to her future as an outstanding family medicine physician. Nephew is a true embodiment of the values of family medicine: relationship-driven, community-committed and equity-focused.
Koushik Paul, fellow MD candidate at the University of Minnesota Medical School, describes Nephew as a visionary who is trauma-informed and an advocate.
“Dannah is a very dignified individual who has a strong sense of morality to do the right thing in the most patient-centered way possible. She is someone who taught me the importance of social drivers of health in coming up with an assessment and plan for a patient. She is very personable and excels at providing family-centered care across multiple generations. She’s also a very compassionate human being who can provide nonjudgmental care to all patients irrespective of their race, age, etcetera. She recognizes how issues such as microaggression and implicit bias can impact patients and works very hard to learn about different cultural and identity specific challenges in health care. It is difficult to find a classmate who is so mature already at such a young age and continues to add on to her clinical acumen through continuous involvement in community projects.
Over the course of the past couple of years, Dannah has consistently showed up to the events that I have organized at the community level, and she is an excellent role model for students that she tutors at the Denfeld High School. All my community collaborators speak highly about Dannah and have only positive things to say. She will be an outstanding family medicine physician who will make her community proud through her unwavering commitment to health equity, social justice and culturally responsive care.”
The MAFP congratulates Dannah Nephew on this well-deserved recognition and looks forward to her continued contributions to the field of family medicine.
About the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians
The Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP) is the largest medical specialty organization in Minnesota, representing more than 3,100 family physicians, family medicine residents and medical students. The MAFP promotes the specialty of family medicine in Minnesota and supports family physicians as they provide high quality, comprehensive and continuous medical care for patients of all ages.
About the MAFP Academy Awards
The MAFP recognizes its members for their hard work and dedication to family medicine via its own Academy Awards. Minnesota family physicians, resident physicians, medical students and researchers are nominated—by educators, learners and colleagues—for a variety of awards. For the Medical Student Leadership Award, the MAFP Board of Directors selects recipients after reviewing nomination letters and credentials. More background on the awards can be found at mafp.org/awards.
Media contact: Kendra Myers, 952-224-3876, kendra@mafp.org