 Who says you can't have it all? Not Appalachian Wireless, we know what you want. Appalachian Wireless offers the hottest smartphones and unlimited data plans, all on the region's number one network. The University of Pikeville and Pikeville Medical Center announced a partnership today that representatives from both institutions believe will positively impact health and health care across the region. Pikeville Medical Center CEO Donovan Blackburn and University of Pikeville President Dr. Burton Webb signed a memorandum of cooperation Thursday between UPIKE and PMC. The document makes official a working relationship between the two institutions. Both Blackburn and Dr. Webb said the memorandum will not only impact the region's overall health but also its economic well-being. Without a healthy workforce, you can have a diverse workforce, you can have a trained workforce, but if you don't have a healthy workforce, then it's hard to recruit people to the region. We are going to be working together on bringing some more federal and state grant money to this area so that we can continue to do research on the health issues that are related and really plaguing our area. Today was a giant leap forward for the University of Pikeville Medical Center to show the commitment to the region as up to what our intent is to promote healthy initiatives but also to work together and collaborate with anything else that may benefit both the University, the hospital and the community. The memorandum signed Thursday does not bind to either PMC or UPIKE to any financial terms. According to the memorandum signed by Blackburn and Dr. Webb, both institutions can however work toward cooperative funding opportunities. The agreement also paves the way for UPIKE and PMC to develop new health care programs and to develop the region's health care providers and provide them a place in the workforce. Two years ago, we graduated 30 nurses, they hired 29 of them. Immediately they had jobs, well now we've moved to 45 nurses in this class and next year's class and then after that we'll move to 60. It's all been approved by the state and by the nursing association in the state and now they're developing a program that they're trying to get most of those nurses to stay local. That's fantastic. There'll be a lot of other things come out. There's millions of dollars available for research and development when you look again at some of the issues that we're faced with with the opioid crisis and our health initiatives. Being able to actually target those dollars, to be able to do research and development using our staff and the educational staff will be huge for the region. Also included in the agreement, work will begin to eventually include the city of Pikeville in the World Health Organization's Healthy Cities initiative. From the University of Pikeville, Chris Anderson, EKB News.