Although veterinarians’ important role in food safety, public health, and zoonotic diseases is well known, with the recent attention the media has been giving to avian influenza, food safety, and bioterrorism, the numbers of veterinarians working in public health fields has been under investigation. Public health officials, members of Congress, and educators have been citing a shortage of research veterinarians.
The Veterinary Workforce Expansion Act was first proposed in the Senate as by Veterinarian Wayne Allard (R-CO) on April 27, 2005, and was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. It was introduced in the House of Representatives by Charles “Chip” Pickering, Jr. (R-MS) on May 9, 2005, and was referred to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on health. If passed, the bill would authorize competitive grants to initiate and support public health and biomedical research programs at veterinary schools and colleges. The bill would approve the appropriation of $1.5 billion over the next ten years for the grants, which would be administered by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and used in part to expand existing schools and increase classroom, administrative, and laboratory space. It has been more than 30 years since the federal government has provided resources to increase the number of veterinarians serving the nation.
The bill would also affect the National Institutes of Health. It would create a new institute at the NIH, the National Institute of Comparative Medicine.
This veterinary expansion legislation is summarized on the Office of Legislative Policy and Analysis website. One paragraph states the following concern:
Despite the critical public health role of veterinarians, the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges foresees a shortage of veterinarians. The 28 U.S. Colleges of Veterinary Medicine, operating at full capacity, can graduate only 2,500 veterinarians each year. Population trends project a shortage of 15,000 veterinarians by 2025.
The AVMA and the AAVMC report that current conservative estimates (as generated using information from the National Research Council of the National Academies, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDA, the American Pet Products Manufacturer’s Association, Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges) identify a current shortage of 1,500 veterinarians in specified public health areas. The 28 U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine are at full capacity and graduate only 2,500 veterinarians each year. There are currently only 86,000 veterinarians in the United States.
This bill is still in committee, and most bills never make it past committees. In an effort to change its status, the AVMA Executive Board and the House Advisory Committee spent part of their biennial legislative visit to the capital lobbying lawmakers to co-sponsor the veterinary workforce legislation. Currently, the Senate version of the bill has 18 co-sponsors and the House version has 45. The board and the HAC intended to use the visit as an opportunity to explain to lawmakers the critical role the Veterinary Workforce Expansion Act could play in protecting the public from emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases, some of which are plausible biologic weapons. The deans and department chairs of U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine and departments of comparative medicine also made visits to representatives and senators on Capitol Hill – over 120 visits in all.
Another significant shortage of veterinarians is happening in large animal and agricultural areas of the profession. Veterinary institutions are attempting to install similar funding and incentive plans to boost the number of veterinarians in this field. Since it is closely tied to public health and food safety, it is no surprise that organizations like the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) have long-term plans that include strategies for recruiting and retaining rural and agricultural practitioners. http://www.record-eagle.com/2005/feb/20vets.htm
Neal Chastain, a retired veterinarian who serves on the Education Committee for the Houston Livestock Show, said the show is encouraging graduating veterinarians to go into the large animal field. He. The Houston Livestock Show, which is one of the largest of it's kind in the world, gives eight $6,000 scholarships to graduating veterinary students who plan to practice large animal medicine in rural parts of Texas. They also have created an endowed scholarship of $50,000 at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M in support of large animal medicine.
Issues surrounding veterinarians’ roles in animal and public health are being raised on local, state, and federal levels even if in some cases courses of action are in their early stages. In February of this year, the USDA reviewed several reports on the role of veterinary medicine in addressing animal health risks. The National Academies Advisors to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine (www.nationalacademies.org) produced one of them. It illustrated how the National Animal Health Infrastructure can be strengthened in light of global trade and travel, intensification of agriculture, blurring of rural-urban boundaries, growing interfaces with public health, wildlife, economies, emerging diseases (SARS, WNV, AI), and the threat of bioterrorism.
The report makes several recommendations in how to approach the issue from several angles. For example, one recommendation states:
Federal agencies involved in biomedical research (both human and veterinary) should establish a method to jointly fund new, competitive, comprehensive, and integrated animal health research programs; ensure that veterinary and medical scientists can work as collaborators; and enhance research, both domestically and internationally, on the detection, diagnosis, and prevention of animal and zoonotic disease encompassing both animal and human hosts.
Although this sounds fairly unspecific, it recognizes the same need to increase our national capacity to train veterinarians and provide them with the tools to investigate the problems that currently threaten public health.
Another of its recommendations states that, “The government, private sector, and professional and industry associations should collectively educate and raise the level of awareness of the general public about the importance of public and private investment to strengthen the animal health framework.” This suggests that there is a sense of awareness that a robust grant program alone will not be able to sustain advances and growth in veterinary medicine in the future. It will also require that individual and collective views evolve to embrace the critical role that animal health professionals play in the well being of the economy and human health.
Some of the colleges and departments in Texas that currently focus on the intersection of animal research and public health are the University of Texas at Austin Animal Resources Center, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Veterinary Medicine & Surgery, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and Houston, the Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine Comparative Medicine Program, and the Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine Veterinary Integrative Biosciences Department.
On its website, Texas A&M University illustrates its vision for its College of Veterinary Medicine for 2020, and it includes many goals that pertain to animal research and public health. The institution hopes to expand its Life Sciences capabilities so that its graduates will play a key role “in the tremendous challenge of Food Safety and Public Health…in medical and surgical research including the understanding and development of new therapeutic agents…as experts in the identification of animal models for human disease… [and] as research scientists”. A stated goal is to graduate students “who are well prepared to address issues of human and animal health and science in the 21st century.”
There is a clear emphasis on technology’s quick expansion and evolution. Likewise, there is a focus on the interdisciplinary research and communication that will have to occur between scientists of many backgrounds to address the shortage of veterinarians “in matters related to those areas where human and animal health interface.”
All of these legislative and education-based initiates indicate that future challenges in national health and security will require a rise in the number of graduating veterinarians and improved research capabilities in veterinary medicine. Existing programs and colleges of veterinary medicine are well aware that this is a pressing and complex need. As TAMU’s website states, the College of Veterinary Medicine has its eye on veterinary medicine’s interdisciplinary nature, and is committed to training DVMs with a “broad based biomedically oriented education” who can “integrate their skills into scientific areas new to veterinary medicine.” But TAMU and veterinary colleges of the same integrity can only host so many students. Hopefully degree-granting institutions with similar goals have the funding to develop in the near future.
