COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Humanities and Social Sciences
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1602028
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Veterinary Access Through One Health and Interprofessional CollaborationsView all 4 articles
Frontiers: "Access to veterinary care -volume II" Research Topic "Enhancing Veterinary Access Through One Health and Interprofessional Collaborations" Title: A unique approach to fostering student wellbeing while supporting community needs through an interprofessional, One Health, access to care veterinary clinic: WisCARES
Provisionally accepted- 1School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
- 2WisCARES Community Veterinary Clinic, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
- 3Center for Education, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
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Service-learning, defined as integrating student education into academically relevant service activities to address a community need, is a way for students to learn and practice multiple skills. WisCARES (Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education and Social Services) is a servicelearning clinic in which veterinarians, veterinary nurses, and social workers form an interprofessional team providing a unique educational opportunity within a One Health access-tocare clinic with care for both the veterinary patient and the client. In addition to hands-on experiences in spectrum of care medicine, veterinary students learn about poverty, homelessness, and social determinants of health, and how these impact clients' decision making and ability to adhere to treatment recommendations. They also work with social workers to understand how moral stress and perfectionism can impact their physical and mental health and develop a selfcare plan to address their own stressors. WisCARES' goal is to help students develop into veterinarians who will be positive additions the profession by recognizing and challenging their own biases, and by consciously integrating access-to-care medicine into their future practice for the wellbeing of their veterinary team and the community they serve.
Keywords: One Health (OH), access to care, Veterinary education and research, Social Work, Veterianary, Service learning and community partnerships, spectrum of care, Contextualized care
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alvarez, Chun, Brooks, Schultz and Lygo-Baker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Elizabeth E Alvarez, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, 53706, Wisconsin, United States
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