Wang, Tong; Hennessy, David A.; O'Connor, Annette

Preventive Veterinary Medicine (May 2012): 198-206.

In 2010 the United States implemented the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP) to address perceived regional shortages in certain veterinary occupations, including food animal practice. With county as the unit of analysis, this paper describes a pair of models to evaluate factors associated with being designated a private practice shortagearea in 2010. One model is used to explain food animal veterinarian location choices so as to provide an objective evaluation of comparative shortage. The other model seeks to explain the counties chosen as shortageareas. Model results are then used to evaluate the program. On the whole the program appears to perform quite well. For several states, however, VMLRP shortage designations are inconsistent with the food animal veterinarian location model. Comparative shortage is generally more severe in states that have no VMLRP designated private practice shortage counties than in states that do.

Keywords: food animal veterinarians, loan repayment program, practice location

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