About Bella Vita Healthcare
Every family needs a home. Our primary care nurse practitioner and certified nurse midwife, women’s health nurse practitioner strive to provide a medical home for our patients – a home where health care providers know their patients and treat them with the respect and care of a loved one. In an increasingly complex system of health care, we aim to simplify the process by treating the whole person and not just a specific disease process or body system.
Stephanie Purinton
Certified Nurse Midwife / Women's Health Nurse Practitioner
Stephanie Purinton was the first Certified Nurse Midwife in the Verde Valley beginning her practice in August of 2009. Stephanie is also a board certified Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. Stephanie received her associate degree in Nursing from Yavapai College in Clarkdale. She has 10 years of experience as a labor and delivery nurse at Verde Valley Medical Center. Stephanie completed her education at Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing receiving a Master’s Degree with certification in Midwifery. She is board certified by the American Midwifery Certification Board and is licensed by the Arizona Board of Nursing. Stephanie is a member of American College of Nurse Midwives. Stephanie has been a Lactation Consultant since 2003 assisting many families with a rewarding breastfeeding relationship.
Stephanie was born and raised in the Verde Valley and is dedicated to the community. She lives in Cottonwood and has two full-grown sons, Austin and Alec.
Stephanie has travelled to Haiti to assist with the earthquake recovery efforts in March of 2010. She then returned in July to work with Midwives for Haiti to train local women to serve their community as a midwife.
Kim Gould
Certified Family Health Nurse Practitioner
Kim Gould is a certified Family Health Nurse Practitioner and has been providing primary care in the Verde Valley for the past 16 years. In 2001 she received a Master’s degree from Northern Arizona University and in 2010 completed a Doctorate in Nursing Practice at Arizona State University. While at ASU she received the ‘Outstanding DNP Project’ award for her doctoral work on HPV vaccination, and is currently involved in improving cervical cancer screening in a remote area of Guatemala. Kim is also a founding member and president of Manzanita Outreach and Kids Against Hunger, a non-profit organization that has packaged and distributed over one million nutritional meals to those in need. Her work in Haiti has had a direct impact on decreasing the effects of childhood nutritional deficits in that country.
She is committed to providing compassionate care of the highest quality to women of all ages. The underlying tenets of her practice are patient relationships, mutual respect, and shared responsibility.
