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.
Our insect expert Dr. Donald Steinkraus suggests a few gifts to encourage children's interest in insects and nature.
"Songbird" by Eva Cassidy
Becca Martin Brown has the last few Santa sightings before Christmas.
at end of show: "Gabrielle" from the Love Actually Soundtrack
Urgent Care Centers are affordable walk-in clinics which serve both cash-only as well as insured patients seeking acute care. But with millions more Americans enrolling onto the health insurance marketplace--and fewer primary care physicians available to see them--urgent care clinics may fill a critical gap. We visit with urgent care provider, Dr. Robert Karas.
Healing Touch, an international healing program, is a biofield therapy, meaning it deals with the magnetic field around the body, to promote various areas of healing. The Healing Touch ministry at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville is more than a decade old, and now has its own location, ten practitioners and provides more than 600 treatments annually.
A recent report from the Northwest Arkansas Council says the military-related impact on Washington and Benton counties is in excess of $150,000,000.
Link: To see the full report: click here