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Naomi Cottoms, M.S., Term: 2007–2011
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 Ms. Naomi Cottoms is the Director of the Tri County Rural Health Network, Inc. (TCRHN), a nonprofit, grassroots organization that works to improve access to health care in the underserved rural counties of Lee, Monroe, and Phillips in eastern Arkansas. TCRHN collaborates with community organizations, including the Phillips County Health and Human Services Department, the Eastern Arkansas Hospice Center, and the Fay Boozman College of Public Health of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. TCRHN connects uninsured or underinsured disabled and elderly clients with available resources, including reduced-cost medicines.
One current TCRHN project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is studying the value of using community outreach workers, or “community connectors,” to direct uninsured and underinsured Arkansans toward home- and community-based care programs. By promoting early intervention, the community connectors help individuals get the services they need to stay at home while potentially saving the state substantial dollars on institutionalized care. Providing community-based services to the elderly and adults with physical disabilities is one-third the cost of placing them in a nursing home.
Ms. Cottoms is president of Walnut Street Works, Inc. (Common Stride), a nonprofit organization with programs that address health care, affordable housing, racial disparities, and community empowerment. She also volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and served as a founding board member of the Boys and Girls Club of Phillips County. Ms. Cottoms has coauthored two presentations for national conferences.
Ms. Cottoms earned a master’s degree in human resource development from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. She has also received training in political leadership and the deliberative democracy process from the Kettering Foundation of Dayton, Ohio.
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