Veterinary Public Health Collaborations: An Essential Component of Future Public Health Preparedness

Veterinarians protect the public's health by serving in multiple roles as epidemiologists, food inspectors, and veterinary medical officers in local, state, federal, and military organizations. One of the more prominent roles that veterinarians play in the public health arena is preventing and controlling rabies by vaccinating domestic and wild animals. However, newly emerging diseases that are influenced by factors such as changing climates, global travel, international trade, bioterrorism, environmental and demographic shifts, and antimicrobial resistance are creating new public health challenges for the future. Although veterinarians possess a unique set of training and educational skills that would allow them to address these challenges and to make significant impacts on efforts to protect the public's health, there is concern among some veterinary and public health leaders that the types of veterinary collaborations and partnerships that will be needed to adequately protect the public‟s health in the future have not been organized and implemented. There is also a concern among some leaders in the public health arena that veterinarians may not be positioning themselves to take advantage of developing opportunities. This paper seeks to explore these complex, multi-disciplinary veterinary public health collaborations, provide evidence to support the development of such partnerships, demonstrate the framework for such partnerships, and give examples of existing veterinary public health collaborations.Master of Public Healt