Access to affordable, comprehensive veterinary care remains a significant challenge for underserved populations, including low-income individuals, older adults, people experiencing housing instability, and communities with limited access to animal health resources. Financial hardship, transportation barriers, limited veterinary services, and competing social needs can result in delayed or forgone care, affecting the health and well-being of both people and their pets. This presentation examines pet care wrap-around services as an integrated, community-based approach to addressing these barriers.
Services may include low-cost or subsidized veterinary and preventive care, pet food and supplies, transportation assistance, temporary pet housing, behavioral support, and connections to human social-service resources. Coordinating these services can support pet retention, reduce preventable relinquishment, and promote household health and stability. Loving Paws Inc.’s framework emphasizes cross-sector collaboration among veterinary providers, animal welfare organizations, public health agencies, social-service organizations, community-based groups, and local governments. By recognizing pets as integral members of households, this approach seeks to advance equity in access to essential pet care while supporting outcomes for both people and animals.
About the Call
Maddie’s Fund hosts a weekly Wednesday Zoom call for animal well-being professionals. These calls are a collaborative place to connect with peers in the industry, share exciting new programs and research on a variety of topics including foster, access to veterinary and behavior care, community partnerships and more. Plus, each call you attend (live or on-demand) gives you a chance to win up to $10,000 through our monthly grant opportunity!
The calls will be recorded to watch at your leisure if you can’t make it live, and are now approved for CAWA and NACA. Some will be approved for RACE continuing education credit, too!
Maddie’s Community Conversations will now be held on Wednesdays at 11am PT/ 2pm ET starting August 5, 2026! Register for the new date and time here: https://maddies.fund/CommunityConversationsRegistration2026
Learn more about Community Conversations, watch recordings and continue the conversation with guest speakers here on Maddie’s Pet Forum: https://forum.maddiesfund.org/communityconversations
Join us every week to learn, share, collaborate and make new friends!
