Nurse Practitioner & Co-Founder
She/her
Natale McManus, MN-NP, RN(EC), is a Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioner with experience across community primary care and hospital-based women’s health. Her clinical experience includes contraception, menstrual and hormonal health, menopause and perimenopause, pelvic pain, sexual and reproductive health, complex gynecologic concerns, and autonomic health.
Throughout her work in community primary care and hospital-based women’s health, Natale became increasingly aware of the gap between the healthcare women needed and the care they were actually able to access. Nurse Practitioners have the knowledge and scope to provide comprehensive care, yet opportunities to develop and expand NP-led services remain limited by funding and existing healthcare structures.
The barriers were not limited to people without a primary-care provider. Natale heard from women both with and without family doctors who were struggling to find the care they needed. Those without primary care often faced significant gaps in continuity and access. At the same time, patients who were attached to a primary-care practice could find themselves with few alternatives when a particular concern could not be addressed there, while eligibility for other publicly funded services could depend on how or where they were already receiving care.
Many patients described feeling caught between protecting a primary-care relationship they valued and seeking additional help elsewhere. Others shared difficult and sometimes deeply distressing experiences of trying to have symptoms investigated, understood, or taken seriously.
Natale wanted to create another option—one that was available to both attached and unattached patients and gave people greater choice in how they accessed care.
Rise Women’s Health grew from the belief that meeting these needs cannot depend entirely on waiting for systemic change. Natale remains committed to the expansion of publicly funded Nurse Practitioner care and hopes that evolving funding models will allow Rise to broaden access over time. But the need for better access exists now.
So she decided to start building it now.
Rise was created to provide patients with another pathway to thoughtful, specialized care—one that can work alongside an existing primary-care provider when a patient has one, while also being accessible to people who do not. The goal is not to replace primary care, but to give patients more opportunity to seek help, understand their options, and participate actively in decisions about their health.
