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Alabama Rural Grant Program Aimed at State's Underserved Areas
With a rural area of 94.7 percent and just under 88 people per square mile, Dale County, in southeast Alabama and home to the small city of Ozark, is statistically rated as the most rural county in a heavily rural state.
Just how rural is it? According to the USDA and the Alabama Department of Agriculture, Dale has approximately one cow for every 3.5 people. Chickens far outnumber human residents, as the county is one of the state’s tops in poultry and egg production. And being located in Alabama’s Wiregrass region, peanuts and cotton are king in Dale when it comes to agricultural products.
But there is one area in which Dale County — and many other heavily rural counties in Alabama — is severely lacking. The county has an insufficient number of veterinarians, particularly those practicing in the area of food animal medicine, to care for all those farm animals. In a state where the majority of counties are still rural and heavily dependent on food animal production, the number of food animal veterinarians to care for them has declined at an alarming rate in recent years.
As a result, according to Glen Sellers, Practice Management Director in the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, in 2021 and 2022, Alabama had 30 counties listed as “critical priority type II or III rural food animal medicine private or public practice shortage areas.” Counties included are Choctaw, Clarke, Conecuh, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Marengo, Monroe, Perry, Pickens, Sumter, Washington, Wilcox, Lauderdale, Limestone, Colbert, Franklin, Lawrence, Marion, Winston, Lamar, Fayette, Walker, Bullock, Pike, Barbour, Coffee, Dale, Geneva and Crenshaw.
Yet, help is on the way. The Auburn CVM recently received a $246,495, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to aid in the recruitment and support of more veterinarians in underserved areas of Alabama, particularly those practicing in the area of food animal medicine. Working on the problem is a CVM team consisting of Sellers; Dr. Jenna Bayne, Farm Animal Associate Clinical Professor; Dr. Manuel Chamorro, Farm Animal Associate Professor; Dr. Jessica Rush, Farm Animal Assistant Clinical Professor; and Dr. Melinda Camus, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Together, they are seeking to address the need for more veterinarians to provide food animal medicine in areas of identified need in rural Alabama.
Sellers, who regularly works to help practicing veterinarians make their clinics more efficient and profitable, is quick to point out that the stakes are tremendous. “The recruitment and support of food animal veterinarians in these underserved rural areas is critical to maintaining the infrastructure necessary for U.S. agriculture to flourish and to ensure a safe and wholesome food supply,” said Sellers.
“We are in very difficult times,” Camus agreed, “so trends must be reversed. However, it will take significant work on the part of the government, veterinary programs, practice owners and producers to make substantive improvement.”
Making that improvement in a meaningful way won’t come easily. According to most observers, the shortage of food animal veterinarians has come about in recent years due to a perfect storm of changing trends and developments in the veterinary industry. Nationwide, there are approximately 500 counties in 44 states that were rated by the USDA as underserved by food animal veterinary care in 2019. Despite that, only about 10 percent of final-year students at the nation’s veterinary schools express an interest in food animal medicine at graduation.
Why that lack of interest?
The factors are more numerous than simple solutions.
- The number of small, privately owned practices is shrinking rapidly. According to the American Veterinary Medicine Association, more than one in ten clinics today is corporately owned and that number is increasing rapidly. This move toward large, corporate clinics may affect flexibility and impact other areas of the traditional relationship between the farmer and small practice veterinarian.
- Pandemic Pets. “The shortage in food animal veterinarians is mirrored by a growth in the number of veterinarians that Americans are much more familiar with — those who take care of the family pet,” according to a recent broadcast on the problem on National Public Radio. “Since at least the early 2000s, more veterinarians have chosen the better pay and more reasonable work hours that go with a practice that focuses primarily or exclusively on ‘companion’ animals.” More recently, with the COVID-19 pandemic-driven spike in pet ownership, demand — and salaries — for companion animal veterinarians has increased rapidly, according to the AVMA.
- Student debt continues to increase. The AVMA estimates that 2022 graduates from U. S. veterinary colleges faced an average of $190,000 of student debt. And the amount continues to grow every year. “Debt, both student and, later, practice loans, has helped to create the shortage of rural practicing veterinarians,” said Frances Kendrick ’92, immediate past president of the Alabama Veterinary Medical Association (ALVMA) and a rural clinic owner in the Selma area. “If student loan responsibility was removed from that problem list, (through financial incentives such as those offered by the Rural Grant Program) the hope is that more new graduates would turn to rural practice rather than away from it.”
- Fewer veterinary students have rural backgrounds. “I believe recruitment of more veterinary students from rural communities or from farming backgrounds is imperative to change the dynamic of our rural veterinary shortage,” added Kendrick. “It’s hard to take a vet student with no rural experience and impress on that person they should give weight to their studies of food animal medicine beyond passing their board exams. These students might get their first large animal experience in vet school. Practicing food animal medicine would be difficult for them because they cannot relate to the client they would serve.”
- Practices in rural areas generally produce less income, longer work hours and a more difficult work-life balance. “Food animal salaries are typically substantially lower than the national mean,” said Camus. “Large animal work is physically demanding, and since rural areas frequently have limited numbers of veterinary practitioners, the hours are often unceasing. Many students also desire to live in larger areas with more things to do, particularly for spousal employment.”
- Rural practice is perhaps the most stressful career choice in a field already known for dangerous stress levels. “The challenges created by the shortage of veterinarians has been felt throughout the industry,” Sellers noted. “The high caseloads and workloads per veterinarian, an ever-expanding client service area, extremely long hours and lower salaries have increased the pressure on rural food animal veterinarians and their staffs. These vets are pushing themselves hard to ensure they are meeting the needs of their communities.”
Through the Rural Grant Program, we can provide networking and educational opportunities for both practicing rural veterinarians and students, research profitable business models specific to rural practice and facilitate opportunities that assist veterinarians in transitioning into sustainable careers in rural areas. With the help of programs such as this, I see great potential for the future of rural animal food animal practice.”
Glen Sellers
There are a number of other less critical factors contributing to the problem as well. Taken together, they paint a picture of a situation that is fast becoming a crisis if it isn’t already. But the USDA Rural Grant has the potential to impact the situation in a major way.
The grant will assist the Auburn CVM team to address the problem in a variety of ways, including providing quality continuing education at reduced cost to veterinarians serving in designated areas of unmet need, connecting veterinarians serving in these rural areas with veterinary students interested in working with target species in those areas, offering educational opportunities in business management and sustainability in rural veterinary practice for veterinary students and providing business management education and practice sustainability consultation to rural veterinary practitioners.
In addition, the team plans to facilitate educational experiences in rural underserved areas for students interested in working with food animals, enable skilled clinical students to assist veterinarians with providing care and encourage and create networking opportunities that assist graduating veterinarians in transitioning into sustainable careers in underserved rural settings.
Auburn students who have been a part of the Rural Grant Program give it high reviews. Dr. Jordan Farrell ’22 participated during his preceptorship at Todd County Animal Clinic, working with Dr. John Laster ’12. “During my eight-week experience,” Farrell explained “we spent two days per week working cattle at dairies or sale barns and I also got the opportunity to work with horses, goats and sheep. The best part of the experience was the variety of cases and the mentoring I received from all the veterinarians I worked with. I didn’t expect to gain the amount of knowledge I did from caring for such a wide variety of animals.
“I feel taking part in this program allowed me to gain a better understanding of the wide range of need for large animal veterinarians,” Farrell added. “Some days we would travel almost three hours to cases because we were the nearest clinic. That experience helped me understand the importance of mentoring and supporting individuals who are considering large animal medicine no matter where I go.”
Dr. Margaret Heath ’23 was the first Auburn student to complete her preceptorship through the Alabama program, while working at the Demopolis Animal Clinic with Dr. Carrie Wright ’03 and Dr. Ted Stuedeman ’87. The practice is mixed, with about 40 percent being food animal medicine. Heath’s interest in large animal medicine was sparked by summers spent on an aunt’s horse farm in Ellicottville, New York, as well as by the experiences she gained while earning her undergraduate degree in animal sciences at Auburn.
Despite her strong background in large animal medicine, she found her time in Demopolis filled with new experiences. “Dr. Wright and Dr. Stuedeman allowed me to participate in everything,” she said. “That meant I received a lot of hands-on experience. I performed and assisted with many surgeries including a foreign body removal, cesarean sections and ear hematoma revisions. I also participated in multiple farm calls, including reproductive evaluations on horses where I improved my ultrasonography skills, and sick visits on cattle where I learned how to attend to sedated animals in the field.”
The financial assistance provided by the grant was an additional incentive for Heath. “Another attractive aspect of the Alabama Rural Grant Program is the financial support it includes for students looking for preceptorships,” she explained. “The program requires that the participating clinic provide housing for students working there. Removing the burden of housing costs made working in a town where I had no family or friends to stay with a viable option.”
Surprisingly for her preconceptions, Heath also found rural life not that different from what she was used to in the city. “I felt I was not missing out on urban life,” she said. “The most unexpected part of my experience was how connected I became with the people. The Auburn Creed has a line that reads ‘I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all.’ I truly believe my time in Demopolis exemplified that. I would go back in a heartbeat because of the people I met and the experience I received.”
Fewer than three percent of recent veterinary graduates are choosing to work exclusively with food animals, with others deciding to pursue advanced degrees or go into specialties. As more students experience the positives of rural or mixed practice through programs such as the Alabama Rural Grant, however, the hope is that trend may eventually be reversed, or at least slowed. For his part, Sellers remains cautiously optimistic.
I don’t see the situation as grim at all,” he said. “There are great opportunities for those seeking a rural lifestyle, a work-life balance, community service and profitable business ownership. The key is education on profitable business models, limited start-up or operational setbacks, clinical and personnel efficiency and an understanding of the client and animal community demographics.
“The Auburn CVM,” he concluded, “with the assistance of the USDA, is working to reverse the negative trends and challenges faced by Alabama’s rural practitioners. Through the Rural Grant Program, we can provide networking and educational opportunities for both practicing rural veterinarians and students, research profitable business models specific to rural practice and facilitate opportunities that assist veterinarians in transitioning into sustainable careers in rural areas. With the help of programs such as this, I see great potential for the future of rural food animal practice.”