 At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. On Monday, April 10th, the University of Kentucky Center of Excellence in Rural Health announced several new programs to further the advancement of rural health services in the region. An open house and subsequent ribbon-cutting ceremonies took place with many different health care partners in attendance. The programs will help UK students provide health care services that are not typically available in rural areas. It really is exciting to have these opportunities here in rural Kentucky. A lot of these are only offered in the city or at the big universities. And, you know, we do write grants that pays for, provides funding for us to bring these things to our students. I want the students that are getting their education in rural Kentucky to have the advantage that other students have at the big universities, at the big city colleges. And to have a Sims lab, this sophisticated in rural, to be able to train community health workers in rural Kentucky really teaches them about rural. And really the goal is, is if we train people in rural, they'll stay in rural to practice. And that's the main goal of that. So the better technology that we can have and it advances so fast to keep up with that, the better we are with our students here at the center. UK is focusing on generating more opportunities for health care workers in the area. In turn, this will help stimulate the local economy and benefit eastern Kentucky communities. You know, the University of Kentucky says we're the University of Kentucky. And so reaching out to rural is very important to have the center here. We've been here for quite some time. The center was actually developed in 1991. And we were able to bring rural programs here to rural Kentucky. And out of those graduates, over 80% of them still practice in rural. So what is so important too is bringing all these entities together like ARH. Most of our students do their clinicals in the ARH facilities. They end up working there. They're offered jobs there when they graduate from here. I appreciate everyone coming today and really helping us get the information out about what the opportunities are here in rural Kentucky for our students. And we appreciate you all coming today and helping us tell our story that we can let people know in the community that, hey, there are good things in eastern Kentucky. There are good things in rural Kentucky that are happening today. And we're not always the sad part or the bad part. There are good things that are happening in rural Kentucky today. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.