Rachel Gunderson, NP Author Page
Rachel Gunderson, NP
Dual Board-Certified Nurse Practitioner · Founder, Avara Medical · Provo, Utah
Background
I spent more than a decade caring for patients in some of the most complex clinical environments in medicine — internal medicine, cardiology, intensive care, neurology, and oncology at Houston Methodist Hospital, and internal medicine at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. That experience gave me a strong foundation, but it also made something clear: our healthcare system is excellent at treating disease, and not nearly as good at helping people truly thrive.
That gap is why I co-founded Joy Wellness Partners Utah in 2022, and why I transitioned to Avara Medical in 2026. Here, I get to practice the way I always believed medicine should work — taking time to listen, running the right labs, and building a care plan around you, not a checklist. Every patient I see has a unique biology, and my job is to understand it.
Education & Credentials
- 2011 B.S. in Nursing — High Honors from Moravian College
- 2013 M.S.N., Adult-Gerontology Acute Care NP from University of Pennsylvania
- 2019 Post-Master's Cert., Family Practice from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
- Active Dual Board Certification AGACNP & Family Practice NP
Areas of Expertise
- Hormone therapy & optimization for men and women
- Peptide therapy and regenerative protocol
- Medical weight loss, including GLP-1 therapy
- IV nutrient therapy and micronutrient optimization
- Integrative functional medicine and root-cause evaluation
- Sexual health and vitality
FAQs with Avara Medical Founder, Rachel Gunderson, NP
I wasn't leaving medicine. I was trying to practice it more completely. Working in the ICU and in internal medicine, I saw patients manage conditions for years without ever getting better. I wanted to understand why. When I started exploring root-cause approaches, functional lab work, and hormone optimization, I saw people genuinely improve, not just stabilize. That shift changed everything for me.
We're not conveyor-belt medicine. Our appointments are a minimum of 30 minutes, usually longer. I want to know your full story: what you've already tried, what your labs look like, how you actually feel day to day. Most of my patients arrive having been told their results are "normal" even though they clearly don't feel normal. That gap is exactly where I work.
Everything I recommend is grounded in clinical research. I hold myself to the same standards I was trained to in acute care settings. The difference is that I'm willing to look at the full picture, including hormones, inflammation, metabolic function, and nutrient status, rather than only treating what falls outside a narrow reference range. Evidence-based and root-cause care aren't opposites. In my practice, they're the same thing.
Honestly, my most consistent results are in hormone optimization. Hormone imbalance affects a huge portion of the population, and when we dial that in, the changes can be dramatic: energy, mood, sleep, body composition, libido. I also see strong outcomes with peptide therapy and medical weight loss, particularly in patients who've tried everything else and hit a wall. The common thread is patients who are willing to be partners in the process.
That it's okay not to have all the answers going in. A lot of people show up feeling like they need to justify why they're here, or apologize for not knowing what's wrong. You don't. That's what I'm here to figure out with you. The best first appointments are the ones where patients just tell me the truth about how they feel, not what they think I want to hear.
Health is not a destination. There's no point where you arrive and stop. Hormones change, life changes, goals change. What I'm building with each patient is an ongoing relationship where we adjust as things evolve. I want to be the provider you call when something shifts, not someone you see once and then figure out the rest on your own.