Miriam Dinatale ’02, D.O.

by Ela Schwartz

From family doctor to emergency services physician to public health officer to Air Force captain to balancing work and family, Dr. Dinatale has embraced change on every step of her journey. During her undergraduate years at Adelphi, she was part of the Honors College, minored in psychology, wrote for The Delphian and participated in the March of Remembrance and Hope, a project that brings students of different religious and ethnic backgrounds to concentration camps in Poland to expand their awareness of the Holocaust and the dangers of intolerance.

After graduating from Adelphi magna cum laude with a B.S. in Biology, she joined the Air Force and attended the College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology, earning a Doctor of Osteopathy degree in 2006. She fulfilled her service requirements at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, practicing family medicine. In July 2009 she was deployed to the Osan Air Base in South Korea, where she switched gears from family practitioner to emergency room physician. In addition to caring for more than 9,000 patients, she found time to visit Thailand and China and meet her future husband. They married in 2011 and had a son in July 2013.

Dr. Dinatale said serving veterans presented a unique set of challenges, as her patients suffered not only from broken bones and infections, but, at times, psychological ills such as “depression or post-traumatic stress disorder due to their connection to Iraq or Afghanistan,” she explained. Thanks to her preparation at Adelphi and studies in osteopathic medicine, Dr. Dinatale said she was well prepared to “take a holistic approach and help the whole person” as opposed to treating only the physical injury or illness.

In September 2013, with her service over, Dr. Dinatale has moved from treating individuals to overseeing the nation’s public health as a U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps medical officer with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It’s another change that Dr. Dinatale will no doubt embrace as thoroughly as those in her past. “The Honors College helped mold me into the physician I am,” she said.