At this year’s Animal Care Expo, Maddie’s Fund partnered with the Dave & Cheryl Duffield Foundation to present an interactive booth centered around access to veterinary and behavior care. As a result, hundreds of attendees shared their experiences, perspectives and ideas of both the challenges and opportunities facing animal well-being organizations across the country.
Survey note: These responses were collected from Animal Care Expo 2026 attendees who chose to participate and are intended to provide a snapshot of perspectives shared at the conference. They are anecdotal in nature and should not be considered comprehensive or representative of the animal well-being field as a whole.
Mapping Access to Care
“Where’s the care in your community?” Attendees identified their community’s closest nonprofit veterinary clinic by putting a push pin into a large map of the United States. We took the data of those clinics (in blue) and overlaid it with the locations of all Rural Humane member organizations (in red).
The map highlights what we know anecdotally: many communities—particularly rural areas—have limited access to veterinary and behavior services. While nonprofit clinics and animal well-being organizations are working tirelessly to support pets and families, geographic gaps remain.
Expanding Access to Care Survey: What are organizations seeing on the ground?
We invited 400 attendees to participate in a brief survey about Access to Care.
Nearly 90% of respondents (89.5%) said their organization already provides access to care programs for community-owned pets. At the same time, respondents identified a lack of funding to expand services (73.7%) as the biggest obstacle to doing more. Looking beyond their own organizations, 92.7% said the biggest barrier facing pets in their communities is a lack of low-cost veterinary providers.
Jelly Belly Voting Station
“What does your community need most to help pet owners access veterinary care?”
Participants cast their votes by filling their cups with jelly beans from one of five tubes representing different solutions. Throughout the conference, the tubes steadily decreased as attendees weighed in on the needs they see every day.
In order of most popular responses:
- Low-Cost Clinics
- Budget-Friendly Payment Plans
- Pet Health Education
- Pet-Friendly Transit
- Translators in Clinics
Looking Ahead
Thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth, shared their experiences and contributed their ideas. Beyond the data we collected, we learned so much from our conversations with you all. We look forward to continuing these conversations and exploring new ways to support organizations working to improve access to care in their communities. See you next year!
Source: Chew On This
