Food animal veterinarians are critical to maintaining a healthy, secure, and safe food supply and for safeguarding the health and well-being of food animals. Today, there is a growing shortage of food animal veterinarians in both private and public practice, particularly in rural communities in the United States and Insular Areas. The Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP) supports mitigating food animal veterinary workforce shortages states and insular areas of the United States. 

As one part of our programmatic support for VMLRP stakeholders, the program has produced a summary of its activities, accomplishments and the challenges facing the profession in the VMLRP Program Summary 2010-2022. This report provides an overview of the VMLRP and summarizes trends and activities of the program to respond to the needs of animal health officials, food animal veterinarians, food and fiber animal producers, and interested stakeholders, and includes program highlights and accomplishments. 

In addition, the report summarizes the amount of debt undertaken by VMLRP awardees and the evidence of the increase in student loan debt among awardees documented over the program period.