Providers

Carey, MSW

Independent Clinical Social Worker Associate 

My Name is Carey (She/They) I am excited to be part of this vibrant  and supportive community.  I have a Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington. My specialized areas of practice in neurodivergence, LGBTQIA, gender affirming care, trauma, and family systems. I have been an activist and member of the Queer community since the early otts. In my spare time I can be found playing in the dirt and brewing various potions in the kitchen. I am supported by my lovely wife, our wonderful child, and poorly behaved cats. 

Tyler RN, BSN

Registered Nurse

Tyler (he/they) joined the Lavender Spectrum Health team in May 2024 as a registered nurse. He holds licensures in Washington and Oregon and started practicing in November 2022. Tyler is passionate about providing healthcare to and advocating for disenfranchised groups, such as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and neurodiverse patients.

His first nursing experience was providing care to patients on a post-surgical unit at a level-one trauma center. In this position, he learned how to treat patients with acute and

chronic ailments. Tyler also got to work with a diverse patient population. This gave him a chance to advocate for these diverse patients to ensure they received compassionate, gender-affirming, and culturally sensitive care. He would use his knowledge of caring for LGBTQ+ patients with his fellow nurses to ensure culturally competent care for these

patients.

Tyler graduated from Washington State University School of Nursing in 2022 with honors. During his time in nursing school, Tyler realized his passion for caring for LGBTQ+ patients and educating himself on treatment for LGBTQ+ needs. With so little research on the community, Tyler would search for research articles focusing on treatment for the community. Tyler identifies as gay and genderqueer. He lives in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood with his partner and fur baby.

Lauren FNP

Family Nurse Practitioner

Lauren (she/her) is a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) who recently graduated from Oregon Health & Science University. Formerly a birth, abortion, and postpartum doula, Lauren was called to doula work by a passion for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Her time spent in this role initially led her to pursue Certified Nurse Midwifery. However, her desire to provide care to people of all genders throughout the lifespan caused her to pivot to the FNP role, and she couldn't be happier about it. She loves being able to provide evidence-based primary care services to all people.


Lauren's central principle to providing healthcare is a deep respect for the person in front of her, their expertise in their own body, and their self-determination. Lauren enjoys meeting her patients where they are at in their health journey, and in particular loves working with those along the LGBTQIA2S+ spectrum, neurodivergent folks, and folks who live with disability, hypermobility/EDS, POTS, MCAS, chronic pain, and autoimmune/other chronic illnesses. 


A daughter of Italian immigrants and originally from New York, she has spent almost 15 years on the west coast but has still managed to maintain her sass. She lives in Portland with her husband, Scott, and her tiny rescue dog, Willow, and firmly believes everyone needs a tiny rescue dog in their lives. In her free time, Lauren likes reading, cooking, baking, nature walks, yoga, and playing board games and video games.


Rowan FNP

Family Nurse Practitioner

Rowan (she/her) is a Nurse Practitioner who holds liberation and autonomy as the core principles of her life's work. She comes from a diverse background which includes activism, birth work, primary care, mental healthcare, and working with adolescents. She first became interested in healthcare while advocating for incarcerated people, and she continues to approach all work through an intersectional, abolitionist, and equity-centered lens. As an NP, she is passionate about creating trusting relationships through patient-centered care with a special interest in preventative, gender-affirming, and sexual healthcare.


Rowan is queer and cisgender. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, reading queer science fiction, and playing word games. She lives in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood of Portland.   

Natalie Paul, MSN, FNP-C

Family Nurse Practitioner


Natalie Paul, FNP-C (she/they) is a family nurse practitioner in practice since 2016 providing primary care, urgent care, and specialty 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’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. 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 seven 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.

She also provides consulting services in the community to increase access to other services including electrolysis for gender-affirming surgeries.

Natalie is a member of the following professional organizations: World Professional Organization for Transgender Health and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

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 four cats. Natalie enjoys hiking, photography, meditation, and is an avid reader of audiobooks and scientific journals. 

Natalie provides evidence-based healthcare services. She has been involved in evidence-based medicine research and other scientific research. Here are her peer-reviewed publications:


Bland, H. T., Gilmore, M. J., Andujar, J., Martin, M. A., Celaya-Cobbs, N., Edwards, C., Gerhart, M., Hooker, G. W., Kraft, S. A., Marshall, D. R., Orlando, L. A., Paul, N. A., Pratap, S., Rosenbloom, S. T., Wiesner, G. L., & Mittendorf, K. F. (2023). Conducting inclusive research in genetics for transgender, gender-diverse, and sex-diverse individuals: Case analyses and recommendations from a clinical genomics study. Journal of genetic counseling, 10.1002/jgc4.1785. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgc4.1785 



Rhoten, B. A., Sellers, J., Charron, E., & Paul, N. (2022). Sexual activity after treatment for head and neck cancer: the experience of survivors. Cancer Nursing Practice, 21(5). doi:10.7748/cnp.2019.e1461



Jaeger, C. B., Hymel, A. M., Levin, D. T., Biswas, G., Paul, N., & Kinnebrew, J. (2019). The interrelationship between concepts about agency and students' use of teachable-agent learning technology. Cognitive research: principles and implications, 4(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0163-6 



Rhoten, B., & Paul, N. (2015). Sex and head and neck cancer: the lived experience of survivors. In PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY (Vol. 24, pp. 57-58). 111 RIVER ST, HOBOKEN 07030-5774, NJ USA: WILEY-BLACKWELL. 


Paul, N. A., Stanton, S. J., Greeson, J. M., Smoski, M. J., & Wang, L. (2013). Psychological and neural mechanisms of trait mindfulness in reducing depression vulnerability. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(1), 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss070


Wang, L., Paul, N., Stanton, S. J., Greeson, J. M., & Smoski, M. J. (2013). Loss of sustained activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to repeated stress in individuals with early-life emotional abuse: implications for depression vulnerability. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 320. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00320




Levin, D. T., Harriott, C., Paul, N. A., Zhang, T., & Adams, J. A. (2013). Cognitive dissonance as a measure of reactions to human-robot interaction. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 2(3), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.5898/JHRI.2.3.Levin