Community Veterinary Outreach

Together, CVO and BI would scale CVO’s One Health program model to Kansas City, MO, home of BI’s US Animal Health Division headquarters. This co-creation expands CVO’s innovative healthcare delivery model leveraging the human-animal bond as a gateway to accessible human health services, thereby making more health for vulnerable people and their animal companions through veterinary care and community collaborations. With this co-creation together, we will be building BI brand recognition, demonstrating BI’s core vision of “value through innovation”, attracting new talent and consumers, increasing employee loyalty and retention, and intrinsically motivating and engaging employees through community service and leadership opportunities.

Our co-creation scales CVO’s One Health program model to Kansas City, MO, home of BI’s US Animal Health Division headquarters. Through innovation, vision and action, together we will increase accessibility to healthcare for marginalized people and pets in the Kansas City area.

CVO’s mission is to create healthy communities through collaboration and social innovation for vulnerable people and their animal companions, with mandates to improve the health and welfare of both animals and people, create multilateral co-operations with community organizations, contribute to the scientific knowledge base on social issues involving animals, and develop program models that are reproducible in other communities. Through this co-creation, CVO enhances community health, establishes new partnerships with community, and further demonstrates its’ model reproducibility and the impact of the One Health approach in simultaneously improving health of both humans and animals.

The co-creation builds BI’s brand recognition as a company/employer, and BIVI brand recognition among animal health professionals, students, and animal owners who contribute to this community-based program. This project demonstrates BI’s “patient-centricity” value for animal health division, its’ employees, consumers, and community members, and engages BI employees in connecting with end-users and to “why we do what we do”. This collaboration enhances employee satisfaction/retention, and attracts new talent who sees BI as a company that both of leads and learns in the community. BI’s core business may also benefit from accessing a greater diverse patient and prescriber population for trials.

My organization will contribute: the Community Veterinary Outreach name, reputation, and model to reproduce the program in KC including process and protocols for community stakeholders, client referrals, veterinary care delivery, veterinary licensure and accreditation for mobile veterinary unit, records keeping, extended product sponsorship and program mentoring. CVO will contribute our expertise in One Health training, process, language and resources for both veterinary and human healthcare professionals to ensure successful collaborations with community stakeholders.

Boehringer Ingelheim will contribute: facilitating connections with Kansas City community actors and economic players in the KC area. BI will facilitate and contribute employee expertise in HR, Finance, Project Management, R&D, Public Relations and Veterinary Health. BI will provide a dedicated project manager/community mobilizer as well as office/meeting space, IT infrastructure, etc.. Other BI resources include expertise in communications, event planning, motivational interviewing training for volunteers/veterinarians, and in developing impact measurements to describe the SROI on healthcare savings. BI also holds a large volunteer pool to staff the clinics and potential product supply to meet the need of patients and clients.

The revenue model for this co-creation is based on the social return on investment of breaking down systemic barriers to accessible health care, and in delivering both preventive (e.g. influenza vaccinations) and intervention-based (e.g. smoking harms reduction) healthcare to a population at high risk of health issues due to socioeconomic status. For BI, increased understanding of client/patient needs and community-based efforts to address their needs will build brand recognition and loyalty contributing to revenue generation. Leading indicators measuring drivers of brand recognition, loyalty, employee/community engagement, and social impact will be determined to ensure efforts are creating the greatest impact.

Risk mitigation will include co-creating a collaboration agreement outlining roles and responsibilities (e.g. decision-making), financial relationship (if any), communications, conflict resolution, evaluation, termination of collaboration, confidentiality, compliance with regulations, and any other relevant policies. Another potential risk/challenge may be gaining community stakeholder and resource commitment. Risk mitigation will be through securing multiple partnerships within the community. Over the life of the project, changes to organizational executive staff or partnerships may affect the support or implementation of the project. Dedicated project leadership by a collaborative team, experienced/trained volunteers, and documented systems/protocols will ensure continuity in case of change and turnover.

CVO and BI have already embarked on a feasibility study with a team of BI Employees under an employee development program (Acceleration). In 3 months, this team has:
● Conducted a needs assessment in the KC area, confirming the need
● Identified and connected meaningfully with community actors (e.g. Swope Health Services, Spay Neuter Kansas City, Kansas City Veterinary Medical Association, Pets of the Homeless, The Rescue Project, Great Plains SPCA, Rotaract)
● Held a roundtable to engage potential collaborators, connect community actors, and discuss approaches
This co-creation also has great potential to scale to other BI locations (e.g. Freemont)

Community partners include local public health, community health, mental health and social services organizations (e.g. shelters, housing, harms reduction, addictions), veterinary associations, educational institutions and other animal health-related organizations, including humane societies and spay neuter facilities. BI’s Acceleration team has already reached out to community stakeholders in KC and held a virtual roundtable with representatives from Swope Health services, KC Veterinary Medical Association, KC Spay Neuter, Pets of the Homeless, Great Plains SPCA and the Rescue Project.