Food Armor Veterinary Student Educational Program Expansion: Reaching more food animal students and early graduate veterinarians across the United States

Specific Aim #1Provide expanded training opportunities for veterinary students and newly graduated veterinarians (not included in the current eight schools) through the Food Armor program and demonstrate how it can be used as a sustainable business model to mitigate veterinary service shortage areasTarget to have 180 veterinary students trained through the program during the 3-year grant period The Food Armor program continues to provide educational opportunities to veterinarians at all stages of their careers and all areas of the profession. The goal of this proposal is to expand the current veterinary student training program which began in 2016 and remains active today. The eight schools receivingtraining as part of the 1/1/201619 grant were chosen for their higher number of food animal enrolled students. This allowed for greater impact of USDA funds by capturing more students under one training (an average of 10-15 per training). However, there are many food animal focused students pursuing their veterinary medical degree in other AVMA accredited schools. These students should also be given the same opportunity to participate in a valuable food animal training and should not be personally penalized by attending a school with a food animal curriculum that may not be as strong. Through this proposal, these students would be invited to travel to Wisconsin for a specialized training to receive the same opportunity as the students in the eight other veterinary schools do. Providing education on food safety and risk management prior to graduation allows these new graduate veterinarians the ability to implement responsible drug use practices within their practices and on their client farms. Emphasizing a strong veterinarian/producer relationship as the foundation of a veterinary practice helps support a sustainable business model which allows the impact on rural veterinarian shortage areas to continue after funding has ceased. The goal of the Food Armor Veterinary Student Educational and Outreach Program and now Expansion program is to become a regular and key component to every food animal veterinarian's veterinary medical education. This will be done through collaboration with veterinary schools and increased opportunities for students in additional schools.Specific Aim # 2Provide free access to online education platform to all participating students to build upon the skills learned in the training workshops. Food Armor has produced 12 online courses which focus on the importance and creation of antimicrobial stewardship plans in animal agriculture. These courses are currently available to veterinarians and producers in food animal agriculture via an online learning management platform. Every course was created with a team of instructional design experts to ensure learners are receiving the highest online quality learning available. All students participating as a part of the veterinary student training program will gain complementary access to these and all future courses for the remainder of their time in veterinary school and for the first two years following graduation. This will allow them follow-up coursework to reiterate and build upon the skills they gained through the Food Armor training and their veterinary medical education.