DEVELOPING A PROGRAM TO TRAIN RECENT GRADUATE AND RISING VETERINARIANS TO IMPROVE RURAL PRODUCER AND VETERINARY SERVICE VIABILITY

Major goal of project is to improve dairy producer economic viability. When dairy producers fail to overcome economic challenges, communitites and industry partners suffer, and veterinarians struggle to remain viable and sustainable.Objectives to meet the major goal are as follows:Equip recent graduate dairy veterinarians with advanced production medicine skills to improve both producer and veterinarian viability. This will be accomplishedutilizing monthly virtual training sessions and two-yearlyin-person workshops for veterinarians who have graduated in the past five-years.Participating veterinarians willpartner with a local dairy producer to evaluate production and financial data, providing rapid feedback to theproducer to identify oppotunties for improvement.Connect current veterinary students with recent graduate veterinarians through an externship match program to expose students to all attributes of rural veterinary practice. Members of the Penn Vet food animal club are preclinical students who are interested, but not committed to food animal medicine. This experience will match food animal club members with recent graduate veterinarians to provide rural clinical exposure for students and potential longer term mentorship.Engage rising high school students to inspire interest in rural veterinary medicine. In partnership with the PA Center for Dairy Excellence and the Walter B. Saul High School (Philadelphia, PA), we will provide twoon-farm experiences per year for rural high school students in combination with their hometown veterinarians from objective 1. The purpose of these experiences is to offer high school students formal educational skills in a hands-on environment exposing students to all aspects of veterinary medicine, including technician and animal care related roles.