Since our Pets for Life program began in 2011, over 60 communities across the country have embraced the opportunity to ensure that people have access to the resources they need for their companion animals. In the U.S., at least 20 million companion animals currently live with families experiencing poverty or in underserved areas, where access to pet care services is scarce. This disparity has made access to care one of the central animal welfare issues of our time.
To help bridge this divide, Pets for Life takes a comprehensive, community-based approach, providing veterinary care, pet supplies, services and useful information at no cost. We’ve always known the power of this work, but now research shows just how important this approach is.
Since 2016, our Pets for Life program has been working with the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Social Work to study the Pets for Life model, using rigorous social science research methods that focus on gathering information directly from underserved communities. These studies show that improving outcomes for companion animal welfare depends on specific kinds of strategies to mitigate barriers in accessing support services for pets.
These studies also add to the data available about companion animal welfare. Traditionally, most data collected about companion animals in the U.S. have come from animal shelters, and such collection of data and its professional analysis by Shelter Animals Count (a national database of animal shelter statistics) is essential to understanding why pets arrive at shelters. However, it can’t account for the circumstances of tens of millions of pets and their families that don’t intersect with local animal organizations. While professionals working in shelters serve the needs of over 5.7 million cats and dogs each year, so many other pets are dependent on the safety nets that operate within their communities. Shelter-based data does not always show the complexities of companion animal welfare in our communities. That’s why we’re so heartened by the findings of multiple studies of Pets for Life that clarify and strengthen the understanding of the needs of pets and their families.
Part of this understanding is to break down biased assumptions about people and their pets. For too long, for example, there has been a bias within the companion animal welfare field about Black and Latino/a families being less likely to get their pets spayed or neutered. But the first study conducted by IHAC in partnership with Pets for Life found that such assumptions were incorrect; all demographics spay or neuter their pets at the same rates once positively engaged in the Pets for Life program in ways that remove barriers to the service.
We also partnered with IHAC and the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine Program on a groundbreaking study to measure and better understand the link between animal welfare and the holistic health of communities. The Pets for Life as One Health study was the first to explore how access to pet care affects community-wide health within the One Health framework, which emphasizes the interdependence of human health, animal health and a healthy environment. Conducted from 2018-2021 in four communities in which Pets for Life works, the study looks at how outreach and pet owner support benefits not only companion animals, but also humans, the environment and society at large. The first two years of the study looked at the Pets for Life approach, which identifies and removes individual and structural barriers to care, increases residents’ perceptions of access to care, and how it increases access to pet services for historically marginalized populations.
During this One Health study, COVID-19 hit. The pandemic complicated Pets for Life programming and data collection and analysis across the full four years of the study, but pre-pandemic findings showed that access to care programming can positively affect perceptions of overall community health in an urban setting. The pandemic’s impacts notwithstanding, the study still shows an increase in community perceptions of environmental health, which further validates the study’s ability to assess community perceptions of public health. The pandemic’s onset during the study actually allowed us to identify potential intervention points for mitigating future pandemic effects on people and their pets in under-resourced areas.
Our data shows that most people reached through door-to-door efforts and relationship-building initiatives in underserved areas have never reached out to the local shelter and that almost three-quarters of pets have never seen a veterinarian. If increasing the use of services for pets in historically underserved communities depends on culturally competent and responsive engagement strategies, it becomes important to be able to assess such strategies. The Animal Welfare Cultural Competence Inventory was developed as a result of the One Health study to do just this: assess cultural competence and responsiveness in animal welfare.
Trust in the Pets for Life program is literally built by knocking on doors. Strategic door-to-door outreach, a consistent presence and an in-depth follow-up process goes so far in building a stronger community for people and their pets. Wherever reliable support is offered for an extended amount of time, transformative change occurs. People who have been isolated from services gain access to resources for their pets and view Pets for Life as a support system. And this support system can go such a long way for a whole community.
We believe that everyone has a place in our movement for animals. By reaching out to underserved communities, we are bridging a divide that has persisted for too long. And now this compelling, reliable data can inspire and inform innovative approaches to lead animal welfare toward a more inclusive future.
