Natalie Paul, FNP

Natalie Paul, FNP-C (she/her) is a family nurse practitioner with over 6 years of experience in providing primary care and urgent care services. Natalie is particularly passionate about LGBTQ+ health, neurodiversity-affirming healthcare, and gender-affirming hormone therapy. Natalie has a strong interest in keeping current on scientific literature for best practices in primary care and practicing evidence-based medicine. Natalie enjoys providing informed-consent hormone therapy to adults over age 18.

Natalie’s background includes four years of primary care at a rural community health clinic where she served the low-income rural communities of Southwest Washington and was a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community. For nearly four years she was the only nurse practitioner who practiced in a community health setting in a three-county radius who provided informed consent hormone therapy and accepted medicare and medicaid. She also worked for one year providing telehealth urgent care services in Oregon and Washington, and 18 months in private practice in Portland, Oregon, providing full spectrum primary care.

She has a unique scientific background for a nurse practitioner; she has six scientific publications (one of which is first author) and had a two-year research fellowship in functional neuroimaging at Duke University where she studied how mindfulness buffers the brain from the effects of early life stress. She continues to publish scientific research on improving health of the LGBTQ community with her spouse, a scientist who studies healthcare delivery for marginalized populations.

Natalie enjoys serving the LGBTQ+ community in her spare time in her role on the board of directors of the nonprofit Rainbow Advocacy Inclusion and Networking Services (RAINS) where she engages in grant writing, community event planning, and community outreach to serve the low-income LGBTQ+ community in rural Cowlitz county, Washington. She also provides consulting services in the community to increase access to other services including electrolysis for gender-affirming surgeries.

Natalie identifies as queer and neurodivergent. She is cisgender and her spouse Kate is a non-binary transgender person. Natalie and Kate live just outside of Vancouver, Washington, with their three cats. Natalie enjoys hiking, photography, meditation, and is an avid reader of audiobooks and scientific journals.