Abstract
Understanding social, economic, and structural barriers to accessing pet care services is important for improving the health and welfare of companion animals in underserved communities in the U.S. From May 2018-December 2019, six questions from the validated One Health Community Assessment were used to measure perceptions of access to pet care in two urban and two rural zip codes. One urban and one rural community received services from a pet support outreach program (Pets for Life), while the other served as a comparison community. After propensity score matching was performed to eliminate demographic bias in the sample (Urban = 512 participants, Rural = 234 participants), Generalized Estimating Equations were employed to compare the six measures of access to pet care between the intervention and comparison communities. The urban community with the Pets for Life intervention was associated with a higher overall measure of access to pet care compared to the urban site that did not have the Pets for Life intervention. When assessing each of the six measures of access to care, the urban community with the Pets for Life intervention was associated with higher access to affordable pet care options and higher access to pet care service providers who offer payment options than the community without the Pets for Life intervention. Further analyses with a subset of Pets for Life clients comparing pre-intervention and post-intervention survey responses revealed statistically significant positive trends in perceptions of two of the six measures of access to pet care. This study provides evidence that community-based animal welfare programming has the potential to increase perceptions of access to pet support services.
Highlights
Access to veterinary care and other pet supportive services has been increasingly recognized within the animal welfare sector as a substantial barrier to the health and welfare of companion animals
The urban site that received the Pets for Life (PFL) intervention was associated with a higher aggregate measure of access to pet care compared to the urban site that does not have PFL present (p = 0.001)
Participants who identified as Latino/a were associated with higher access to affordable pet care options than participants who identified as White (p = 0.046)
Summary
Access to veterinary care and other pet supportive services (e.g., grooming, behavior training, pet supplies) has been increasingly recognized within the animal welfare sector as a substantial barrier to the health and welfare of companion animals ( referred to as “pets”). These efforts are operationalized as interventions to address a number of potential systemic barriers to accessing human healthcare, including: housing and built environment (e.g., Gautreaux Residential Mobility Program, Healthy Food Financing Initiative, Project U-Turn; Scattered-Site Public Housing Program, Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program); low socioeconomic status (e.g., Great Smoky Mountain Study, Supplemental Security Income Program, New Hope Random Assignment Experiment, Conditional Cash Transfer Programs, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Earned Income Tax Credit); education (e.g., Perry Preschool Project, Carolina Abecedarian Project, Nurse Family Partnership, Harlem Children’s Zone); and employment (e.g., Civil Rights Policies, Supported Employment) Research indicates that these programs have resulted in reduced health disparities, improved population health, decreased morbidity and mortality, and lower medical care costs in historically marginalized communities (e.g., Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, LGBTQ+ individuals, individuals living in poverty or experiencing homelessness, individuals with disabilities, and aging adults) [4,5,6]
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