Tennessee participants at the DRA Leadership Institute are (l to r): Dennis Henderson, president, TLM Associates, Jackson; Lisa Hankins, executive director, Lauderdale County Chamber/Economic & Community Development, Ripley; Sharon Taylor-McKinney, BERO enterprise specialist, Tennessee ECD, Memphis; Franklin Smith, Haywood County Mayor, Brownsville; Ken Thorne, director of ECD, Northwest Tennessee Development District, Martin.

Smith gets insight on health initiatives at DRA leadership meeting

Local and state Economic and Community Development officials represented Tennessee at the recent Delta Regional Authority (DRA) Leadership Institute meeting, Nov. 8 – 10, 2006, in Little Rock, Ark. Among those participating was Haywood County Mayor Franklin Smith.

Institute participants learned about DRA’s new Healthy Delta initiative, focusing on diabetes, and attended sessions on strategic planning and specific problems affecting the Delta region.

Health care is a central organizational topic and the DRA board has asked institute participants to organize groups around five key issues: disaster preparedness, tele-medicine, school-based health centers, and wellness and obesity.

Over the next year, each group will work on a project in its area of interest and present its findings in June at the institute’s next graduation.

The next DRA meeting will be in New Orleans in January.