SEARCY — Brooks Davis, a member of the board for the Searcy Regional Economic Development Corp., said the group has normally focused on bringing manufacturing plants into the area to grow jobs.
However, the economic development group is switching gears to something that has really exploded in recent years — the health care industry.
“We’ve had some success in the manufacturing sector,” Davis said. “The primary group in the past 10 years in the area has been the health care sector. We have two strong players in that sector — Unity Health and Harding University.
“Their leadership has created multiple opportunities to expand their operations, specifically around the health care industry.”
With that in mind, Davis said, the economic group is partnering with Unity Health and Harding to sponsor the first Community Healthcare Conference, set for 11:30 a.m.
to 3:30 p.m. Thursday. The topic of the conference is Combating the Prescription Drug Epidemic.
The conference will take place in the Dogwood Education Classroom at the Unity Health Specialty Care Campus, 1200 S. Main St. The conference is free.
“As we were beginning to think about how to promote job growth in the nonmanufacturing sector, we realized that we had a tremendous strength with regard to the health care industry,” Davis said. “We began to think, ‘How do we support the creation of jobs in the health care industry?’ And one of those ways was to continue to support Unity and Harding University.”
Even though this first conference isn’t necessarily about growing jobs, it does highlight what the health care industry in Searcy and White County can do, Davis said.
“We want to promote job growth in the health care sector in White County,” Davis said. “At the same time, we want the community to benefit from those capabilities and strengths. We decided that on the front end, we were going to provide a high-value educational forum for people in the community for a specific health crisis that is occurring. We wanted to do it in a way that we could also highlight the strengths of Unity Health and Harding.”
The guest speakers are Dr. Scott Palmer of the Mayo Clinic, whose topic is the clinical perspective Battling the Opioid Crisis; Jimmy McGill of the Exodus project, who will speak on Personal Impacts and the Local Battle; and Josh Brown of Harding University, who will speak on Research Findings About Local Drug Take Back Programs.”
Palmer is a neurologist in Jacksonville, Florida, with the Mayo Clinic. He specializes in pain medicine. He graduated from the University of Miami School of Medicine in 2003. Unity Health has a partnership with the Mayo Clinic.
McGill is a staff member at the Exodus Project in Little Rock. The Exodus Project works with inmates by sending them to 240 hours of classes over a 12-week period in an effort to keep them from going back to jail once they’re released.
Brown serves an an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the College of Pharmacy at Harding.
Davis said approximately 50 people had already signed up for the conference prior to press time. He said there is a cap of 80 people.
“It looks like we’re going to have a full house, and it will be a great start to what we look to being an annual event,” Davis said. “We want this to be an open session for anyone who will benefit from the program. You don’t have to have any sort of health certification or background to attend.
“If your family has been impacted by prescription-drug abuse, we’d love to have you. This is really a community event. We want everyone to feel welcome to attend.”
For more information or to register, call (501) 268-2458 or email scc@searcychamber.com.
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.