Dr. Connie Hernandez graduated from Bastyr University in Seattle in 1991, with specialties in women's health care and counseling. With husband, Dr. Marcel Hernandez, she founded and coordinated the Brattleboro Naturopathic Clinic, in Brattleboro, Vermont. After several years of practice in Vermont, Dr. Connie and her family re-located to California, a climate Cuban born Dr. Marcel could tolerate better than those brutal Northeast winters. Drs. Connie and Marcel were active in the naturopathic licensing efforts in Vermont and Maine (both now licensed states!), and hoped to facilitate the California licensing effort as well.

In California, Drs. Connie and Marcel founded and developed Pacific Naturopathic and the Natural Health Associates, now in its 8th year and second location. Dr. Connie sees chronic and acute patients of all ages, with any type of complaint, but has a particular emphasis on women's health care, peri-menopause, adjunctive care for cancer patients, and spiritual counseling. She emphasizes dietary change, nutritional supplementation, botanical medicine and flower essences in her treatment protocols, and believes the deepest healing involves spiritual transformation.

Dr. Connie spends about one week a month on the Big Island of Hawaii, where Drs. Connie and Marcel are developing the Pacific Naturopathic Retreat Center, a one of a kind naturopathic healing retreat. There she balances her busy clinic life with visualizing the retreat, landscaping, gardening, and family time. She enjoys living two lives at once!

Dr. Marcel Hernandez also trained at Bastyr University in Seattle. After he and his wife and partner, Dr. Connie, left their busy naturopathic practice in Vermont, they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where Dr. Marcel served as Director of Wellness Insurance Programs for American Western Life Insurance Company and maintained a private practice as well.

While at American Western Life, Dr. Marcel developed and directed a revolutionary managed care health insurance program which stressed preventive medicine and self care and provided reimbursement for visits to alternative health care providers. While under his direction, the programs at American Western Life were unmatched in the insurance industry in terms of commitment to reimbursement for integrated therapeutic approaches.

With Dr. Connie, Dr. Marcel has co-founded and co-directed high-profile naturopathic clinics in Brattleboro, Vermont, and in Palo Alto, California. The Palo Alto clinic functions along the lines of a holistic HMO, with practitioners of various disciplines combining skills and energies in their approach to patient care.

When not seeing patients in Palo Alto, Dr. Marcel is directing the development of an innovative, naturopathic retreat facility and hydrotherapy center, situated on three tropical acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the Big Island of Hawaii.

As a holistic physician, Dr. Marcel uses an integrated therapeutic approach in seeking to help his patients address their health concerns. Among the therapies he employs are clinical nutrition, vitamin and mineral therapy, herbal medicine, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, lifestyle counseling and bioenergetic medicine. Although he practices general family medicine and is able to address a wide variety of health issues, over the years Dr. Marcel has developed particular expertise in men's health, pediatrics and digestive disturbances. He is the author of "Your Child's Health", a manual for parents emphasizing nutritional strategies for raising healthy children.

Before becoming a physician, Dr. Hernandez taught English writing and literature at an international university in Japan. While in Japan, he also co-published a health magazine and studied Japanese music.