Meet Our Team

Dr. John Gardner is a board-certified family physician with more than fifteen years of clinical experience. He grew up in a small Georgia town where his father practiced as a solo physician — an early model of the kind of long-term, relationship-driven medicine he later set out to build himself.

Before medicine, Dr. Gardner studied engineering at Georgia Tech and worked in software consulting in Atlanta and Germany. He returned to medicine and earned his Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Georgia in 1999, then completed his family medicine residency at Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, a UNC Chapel Hill–affiliated program. He is board certified by the American Board of Family Physicians.

After relocating to Western North Carolina to raise his family, Dr. Gardner founded Apple Valley Family Medicine, where he cared for thousands of patients across the community. He later established PrimeHealth Asheville to refocus on patient-centered care and reduce the administrative weight of conventional primary care.

Dr. Gardner is described by patients and colleagues as an attentive listener with an analytical view. His clinical philosophy puts lifestyle first — sleep, movement, nutrition, stress — and reserves medication for when it's genuinely the best tool for the problem.

Outside the clinic, Dr. Gardner enjoys racing his car at the track and hiking.

Dr. Jennifer Wilhelm is a board-certified internal medicine physician with more than twenty years of experience in Western North Carolina. She joined PrimeHealth Asheville in 2022 after a career spent at Pardee Hospital Internal Medicine Associates and later AdventHealth.

Dr. Wilhelm earned her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University in 1995, graduating Magna Cum Laude. She completed her medical degree at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1999, where she was awarded membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society. She finished her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, she moved to Asheville with her husband David in 2002, the day after she finished residency, and has been caring for the community ever since. Her clinical focus is on disease prevention and wellness promotion — she sees her role as a patient advocate first.

Dr. Wilhelm lives in South Asheville with David, her two teenage children, and Bo, a rescue black Labrador. She stays active with her kids' school and sports schedules, exercises regularly, and loves to travel.

Dr. Sara Caldwell is a board-certified internal medicine physician and an Asheville native who has spent most of her life in Western North Carolina. She earned her undergraduate degree in Health and Wellness Promotion from UNC Asheville, graduating Summa Cum Laude, before continuing on to Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem.

During medical school she helped create a student wellness program designed to prevent burnout among medical students — an early signal of the prevention-first philosophy that still shapes her clinical practice.

Dr. Caldwell completed her internship and residency at Carolinas Medical Center (now Atrium Health) in Charlotte, where she was named Intern of the Year and went on to serve as 3rd-year resident co-chief. In 2016 she returned home to Asheville and began practicing at Asheville Internal Medicine alongside her father, Dr. Greg Glance. She has also served as the local medical director for Aledade, Inc.

Her clinical focus is preventative care and a holistic view of the patient — she works to understand someone's full health picture rather than treating isolated conditions one at a time.

Dr. Caldwell lives in Fairview with her husband Brett and their dog Wicket. She hikes, paddle boards, travels, and spends as much time as she can with her niece Nora.