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.
Last Friday, former president Bill Clinton was at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where doctors are working to find genetic causes of childhood cancer. It’s work that would not be possible without the first map of the human genome, which was completed while Clinton was President. Eleanor Boudreau from our partner station WKNO in Memphis filed this report.
Ozarks at Large’s Christina Thomas talks to Matt Melson, a wildlife biologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, to find out how wild animals survive in extremely hot and dry conditions.
“New Slang” by The Shins
The Migration Policy Institute based in Washington D.C., with financial support from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock, commissioned Dr. Rafael Jimeno to conduct a scientific survey of Marshallese migrants who’ve settled in Springdale, the first study of it’s kind.
"When I Survey" by Various Artists
First United Methodist Church in Springdale will host a community block party next month.
"Community" by Cluster
Author Megan Bergman talks to Ozarks at Large’s Katy Henriksen about her book “Birds of a Lesser Paradise,” a collection of short stories that was just cited by the Huffington Post as a must-read.