Improving Access to Vet Care

Access to vet care is currently a topic of national interest. In Asheville, NC and the rural mountain county around Asheville, access to veterinary care is a significant issue due to a number of barriers that many families face, including transportation, language, and cultural barriers. Over the past few years, Asheville Humane Society has designed, implemented, and evaluated multiple models for addressing access to veterinary care issues and the associated barriers to accessing care. Some of these methods include a veterinary voucher system to be used at local vet clinics, no-cost mobile “pop-up” veterinary clinics in targeted locations (i.e. Housing Authority communities and homeless shelters), stationary “pop-up” low-cost veterinary clinics at our centrally located Community Pet Center, low-cost vaccination clinics, and preventative health support that helps pet owners identify issues early on before they become emergent. These programs were designed using qualitative and quantitative data used to target geographic locations, determine the type of veterinary care most needed, and assess the most common reasons why clients were not accessing veterinary care. We also utilized information and systems from local partner agencies and developed new community partnerships that would increase the effectiveness of programming.

In this presentation, we will discuss the following topics: the main barriers that we see to accessing veterinary care, how to identify barriers in your community and why this is important, how to target your programming, access to vet care solutions that address each barrier, successes, learning opportunities and challenges related to our programming, and the role of community partnerships in access to vet care work.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify and address barriers to accessing vet care

2. Gain a basic understanding of the use of different types of qualitative and quantitative data to effectively target programming

3. Understand how and why to build community partnerships across industries