No Money? No Problem: Moving from Surrender to Support on Any Budget

A pet guardian shouldn’t have to choose between making rent or buying groceries and a trip to the vet for vaccinations or an overdue wellness exam, but this is exactly the choice too many face. A recent Access to Care Coalition Report coupled with American Veterinary Medical Association data revealed that 59 million pets live with guardians making under $20,000 a year, and one out of every four households has experienced a barrier to veterinary care in the last two years.

San Francisco SPCA Director of Community Medicine Jena Valdez, DVM, is working to narrow this gap with a community clinic model that provides preventative pet care to historically underserved neighborhoods in her city. In a new UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program webinar, Valdez shares the path to opening a reduced-cost walk-in preventative care clinic as part of the SF SPCA’s efforts to ensure all San Francisco pets and guardians have access to humane care by 2030.

Sustainable from year one, the SF SPCA Walk-in Wellness/Call-Ahead Clinic is an accessible and practical model for all shelters, regardless of their budget or access to eager donors. In fact, Valdez noted, the clinic ended up using exactly $0—zip!—of the $50,000 initially budgeted to get the project off the ground.

If you’re hoping to make a difference in access to care in your shelter or community—or if you just want to be inspired to dream big!—join us in celebrating the clinic’s first birthday and learn how to start and sustain your own community clinic. Discover how Valdez and staff made the case to SF SPCA senior leadership and board to open the clinic and how they’ve succeeded in making it sustainable, scalable, and valuable to pets and their people.