Mercy Health used an innovative walking program to become one of the healthiest workplaces in the country.
Ozarks At Large
A roundup of events and news for the next few weeks include an alternative way to deliver a Valentine.


An administrative law judge with the Arkansas Public Service Commission on Friday ordered SWEPCO to proceed on its proposed plan to build a massive new power transmission line through portions of northwest Arkansas. Also, Governor Mike Beebe says that recent cost analyses of operating the state's Private Option expansion of Medicaid justifies the program's passage during last year's session of the state legislature. And the state Attorney General's office warns residents about rapid-refund tax providers.

Ahead on Ozarks, a conversation with young adult author An Na. Also, we learn what it takes to become a police officer.

We speak with An Na, author of A Step From Heaven, a book that was awarded the Michael L. Prince Award when it was published a decade ago. Critics and reviewers commended the book's characters for speaking like a child without being too precocious or condescending. The author will speak in Fayetteville later this month.
Latest Edition of Ozarks at Large
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Ahead on this edition of Weekend Ozarks, we visit the kitchen of Jen Lewis, take a spin in a state-run clinic that aids veterans in rural communities, and we meet a recovering opiate addict who has found hope with methadone.
In 1963, Al Kuettner covered the March on Washington and Dr. King's speech on August 28, 1963. In 2007, he talked to Ozarks at Large about that day. His memoir is titled March to a Promised Land and was published in December, 2006. He died in May 2009.
Pickin' Post host Mike Shirkey discusses his long-time relationship with music.
Those are the respective years that 3 music producers have been hosting jazz and blues shows on KUAF. Ozarks at Large’s Christina Thomas speaks with Robert Ginsberg, Paul Kelso and Daniel Estes about how they got their start and what motivates them to keep going during the launch of our series, 3 People.
Exxon-Mobil officials meet with state lawmakers to give reassurances about the safety of the Pegasus pipeline. The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture releases a report that claims manufacturing jobs in rural Arkansas towns may never return because of long-term changes to the state's economic landscape. And, state economic development incentives recieve more scrutiny after recent layoffs by companies who accepted them.
To end our summer series on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Arkansas we examine a little known aspect of the health reform law that will greatly expand opportunities for thousands of Arkansans requiring long term health care to receive help, not in an institution, but at home. The initiative is called "Community First Choice Option."