MVMA QUARTERLY - FALL 2022
Loan Forgiveness Offers Solution to Rural Veterinarian Shortages
another week at Bowling Green Vet Clinic when she was 16. When another chance at job shadowing came up during her senior year, she chose the Bowling Green Vet Clinic again. Perry was pulled away from Bowling Green for a time but only to pursue those veterinarian dreams. During veterinary school at MU, she came across the Dr. Merrill Townley Large Animal Veterinary Student Loan Program, which provides loans to vet students who plan to practice on large animals. The state forgives the loans for students who go on to practice large animal medicine.
By Evan Lasseter. Photo by Margo Wagner (Reprinted from the Columbia Missourian)
After Perry graduated from veterinary school in 2019, she spent a year doing veterinary work in Franklin County before returning to the Bowling Green Vet Clinic, where she worked for two years as an associate. Given the amount of money she saved through the loan program, she was able to make a down payment and become a co-owner. “I really do feel like on a daily basis, I am living my childhood dream.”
Margo Wagner - Columbia Missourian
The Missouri General Assembly created the Large Animal Veterinary Student Loan Program in 2007. Veterinary students at MU can be forgiven up to $20,000 a year in the loan payments for a maximum of four years. The total amount awarded through the program by the Missouri Department of Agriculture so far is around $1.5 million.
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onja Perry went to the Bowling Green Vet Clinic on her seventh grade job-shadowing day.
She already had the itch to become a veterinarian after raising some goats on her family’s land in Bowling Green. At first, she wanted horses, like every 5-year-old girl in the world, she said. Perry ended up with goats, but it wasn’t like she settled. She began breeding them, and when they had health problems she would always wonder why. “I hated calling someone else to come solve the health problems of my goats,” she said. Perry wanted to solve them herself, so by the age of 10 she was committed to a career as a veterinarian. She spent 14
Tackling student debt targets one of the largest barriers to veterinary school. The estimated cost to attend the MU College of Veterinary Medicine is around $51,000 per year. However, around half of its students are from out-of-state, Cohn said. Those students pay around $93,000 per year. “They need some kind of foothold, some kind of opportunity,” Steve Strubberg, Missouri’s state veterinarian, said. “So it’s a good way to get them started, I believe.” The program is one way for Missouri to tackle shortages of large animal veterinarians, a problem that is felt nationwide and affects mostly rural areas. Forty-six states have at least one shortage area, which can include small or large animal veterinarians, according to a shortage map from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There was an increase in demand for all veterinary care during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is evidence to suggest sustained demand for food and farm animal veterinary services in some rural areas, Michael San Filippo, media relations manager for the American Veterinary Medical Association, said in an email. Although data on the shortages is hard to track, a prepandemic survey by the Missouri Veterinary Medical Association Rural-Veterinary Task Force found around 80% of its respondents perceived a rural vet shortage. The USDA map lists rural vet shortages in multiple regions of the state.
