Measuring Changes in Perceptions of Access to Pet Support Care in Underserved Communities

Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Sloane M. Hawes¹  Kaitlyn Elting¹  Kevin N. Morris¹  Tess M. Hupe¹  Jordan Winczewski¹  Amanda Arrington²  Sandra Newbury³ 

[1] Institute for Human-Animal Connection, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver, Denver, CO, United States;Pets for Life, The Humane Society of the United States, Gaithersburg, MD, United States;Shelter Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States;

关键词: companion animals;    access to care;    animal welfare;    social determinants of health;    generalized estimating equations;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fvets.2021.745345

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown