Our Staff

Staff

Kalven Link

Administrative Assistant

Kalven (they/them) supports Lavender Spectrum Health as our Administrative Assistant. In their personal and professional life, Kal is committed to assisting trans, queer, and neurodiverse communities in navigating and overcoming the unique challenges they face.

A roller derby skater, proud fur parent, and Vancouver local, Kal is thrilled to join us as we strive to provide LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent individuals with the accessible, reliable, and affirming healthcare they need.


Kate Mittendorf, PhD

Consultant

Kate Mittendorf, PhD, (they/them) is an interdisciplinary translational scientist who studies translational genomics and cancer care delivery by day. As a consultant for Lavender Spectrum Health (and coincidentally, Natalie's spouse), they lend their healthcare informatics, website development, and accessibility expertise to Lavender Spectrum Health (LSH) when need arises. Their passion is improving healthcare for populations that have been marginalized -- both in their scientific career and at LSH. They are queer, trans, and disabled, and are an avid disability activist, whose expertise in disability accessibility in the sciences has been nationally recognized. They live with Natalie, their four rambunctious felines, and their plethora of art and craft supplies in the Hazel Dell area. For more information on their scientific pursuits, visit their website. 

Providers

Natalie Paul, MSN, FNP-C

We are currently staffed by one provider. 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.

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 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