ASHLAND, Ky., October 1, 2019 – When Kentucky Power field employees head out into the community on Tuesday, they will have a new piece of equipment. Across the company, employees have traded their traditional white hard hats for pink ones for October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The hats allow employees to show support for the men and women in their lives – coworkers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sisters, and brothers – who have been affected by breast cancer. Employees wanting to bring the pink hard hats to Kentucky Power after seeing other AEP operating companies use them.
“Our employees are in the community working to provide safe and reliable power to customers every day, and many of them are wearing hard hats to do their jobs safely,” said Brett Mattison, Kentucky Power president and chief operating officer. “Our hope is people will notice the hats employees are wearing and this small act it will encourage more people to get screened.”
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women, second only to lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. There is still a large racial gap in mortality, with African-American women having higher death rates compared to whites, even as incidence rates are similar.
To learn more about the signs and symptoms of breast cancer and how you can help, visit https://www.cancer.org/.
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Kentucky Power, with headquarters in Ashland, provides service to about 165,000 customers in all or part of 20 eastern Kentucky counties, including Boyd, Breathitt, Carter, Clay, Elliott, Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Knott, Lawrence, Leslie, Letcher, Lewis, Magoffin, Martin, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, Pike and Rowan. Kentucky Power is an operating company in the American Electric Power system, one of the largest electric utilities in the U.S., delivering electricity and custom energy solutions to nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system. AEP’s headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio.
