First year, dental school students from the University of Kentucky traveled to the Eliot County Primary School earlier this week.

Through the Sale Kentucky program, the soon to be dentists brought a variety of dental health care treatments to their younger counterparts.

This program has been around for probably close to 40 years.

Every year we take dental students, first year dental students, and give them the opportunity to experience different communities, underserved populations, and provide some preventive care.

And today is kind of the first day that we can showcase our new skills that we've learned from our professors.

We are here today cleaning kids teeth and putting little sealants on them, which are just plastic coatings on those molars to help prevent them from getting decay back there.

So we're here.

There is a group yesterday and a group today, and we're just here cleaning their teeth and just helping them keep them nice and healthy, but really just here for prevention and education to show them that going to the dentist can be really fun and it doesn't need to be scary.

It's an incredible experience.

Number one is the skill set to be able to talk to the child and interact with them and be able to provide some type of dental care.

But it's very important that the students have the opportunity to bond with the children and talk to them and create a trust.

And if they can create the trust, the children will be more receptive to sit in the dental chair and have a preventive appointment.

Kids are a little squamous.

They're always moving.

They bring higher energy.

They're more fun to work on, I think.

And they're just overall good patients.

Unfortunately, there is there's a lot of need for health care, medical and dental, and the parents might be sincere or these children live with their grandparents and they just don't have the opportunity to travel to a dentist.

So I think the opportunity for some type of mobile service coming to the elementary schools or coming to our community centers is that is a very strong opportunity for health care.

I'm from Ashland, Kentucky.

Fortunate in Ashland, we do have a lot of dentist, but not nearly enough.

But in more rural areas like here, there aren't very many at all.

So just by coming today, we can kind of close that gap a little bit and help out.

And the younger population.

They can see the need, especiall A large percentage of our students are from Kentucky, so they are from these rural areas and the goal is that they come back to these communities and then become a dentist and provide the care to adults and children.

This is a memory that they will always have, and I know a lot of them will come back to these communities because this is such a great feeling to give back.

Indeed, 93 elementary school students were treated over the course of the U.K.

Dental School's visit to Eliot County.