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Veterinary Care Deserts Are Demographic, Not Just Geographic

Recently, Bronwyn Orr, former President of the Australian Veterinary Association, published Australia’s first national mapping of veterinary care deserts.

It is important to say this clearly at the outset: this work matters.  It is difficult to overstate how important it is.  

For years, veterinary leaders have been able to describe workforce shortages, rural attrition, and access challenges, but have struggled to answer the question policymakers repeatedly ask: “where, exactly, is the problem?”  Without robust data, the profession was forced to rely on proxy indicators such as job advertisements, clinic closures, and anecdote.

By using open-source geospatial modelling to identify Australians living more than 60 minutes from veterinary services, Orr and her co-author Douglas Pukallus have given the profession something it has never had before - credible, defensible, population-level evidence of geographic veterinary inaccessibility. Their work is available here: The Tyranny of Distance: Mapping the accessibility of veterinary services in Australia using geospatial modelling

Despite being asked for by government policymakers, Orr's work was self funded.

Orr found that veterinary care deserts affect more than 250,000 Australians, with entire regions outside reasonable access. The implications for animal welfare, biosecurity, and emergency response are profound.

This is a foundational piece of work, and it deserves recognition.  However, it should only be the beginning of the conversation.

Geography tells us where access fails, not for whom

Geographic mapping tells us where veterinary services are absent.

What it cannot fully capture is how access is experienced by different people, even where services technically exist.  Because access is not a simple function of distance.

When a clinic exists, but access does not

A veterinary service may be geographically present, but still functionally inaccessible due to:

• cost and financial precarity

• disability or age-related travel barriers

• lack of physical or communication accessibility

• cultural safety concerns

• digital only booking systems

• limited hours or long wait times

• workforce churn and loss of continuity

On a map, access exists.  In lived experience, it may not.

Expanded care deserts for specific communities

Building on Orr’s work means asking a second question alongside geography:  For whom does this map represent real access?  This matters because certain groups experience expanded veterinary care deserts, regardless of distance.

For people with disability, the desert expands when travel itself is unsafe or exhausting, or when clinics are not physically or communicatively accessible.

For older clients and carers, distance grows when driving long hours is no longer feasible, or when systems assume digital fluency and flexibility.

For low income households, cost becomes a form of distance. Preventive care slips out of reach long before emergency care does.

For First Nations communities, as Orr’s own work highlights, geographic inaccessibility often overlaps with broader inequities in health, infrastructure, and trust. A clinic that is not culturally safe is not truly accessible.

In these contexts, veterinary care deserts are not just rural.  They are demographic.

The often unseen workforce dimension

There is another layer we rarely connect to care deserts: the veterinary workforce itself.

When systems fail to retain disabled, neurodivergent, ageing, or otherwise marginalised veterinarians, access erodes quietly. Before clinics close, capacity shrinks. Before deserts appear on a map, they form in rosters, waiting lists, and burnout statistics.

A profession designed only for a narrow slice of its workforce will struggle to maintain geographic coverage over time.  Retention is access, as is inclusion.  Geographic deserts are often the final visible stage of workforce exclusion.

Retention of disabled, neurodivergent, ageing, and caregiving veterinarians is not a niche concern. It is central to geographic coverage.  Practices that are inaccessible to their own workforce are more likely to churn, contract or even disappear, particularly in rural and regional settings.  Policy responses that support inclusive job design, flexible practice models, and safe disclosure environments are therefore access interventions, not optional extras.

Why this matters for policy and reform

Orr is absolutely right that policymakers have a right to ask for data.  Yet if the only data we bring forward is geographic, we risk designing solutions that still leave many communities behind.  

Mapping clinics is essential.  Mapping who can reach, afford, enter, and safely use them is the next step.

If we frame veterinary care deserts solely as a rural problem, we will keep missing:

• urban pockets of inaccessibility

• disability related exclusion

• financial barriers

• workforce sustainability failures

Australia now has proof that meaningful access mapping is possible. Expecting it to remain self-funded is neither sustainable nor appropriate.  If governments want defensible policy, they must invest in ongoing data collection, interdisciplinary collaboration, community consultation and workforce-informed modelling.  And that modelling needs to have a much broader lens than we have narrowly defined it in the past.

Building on strong foundations

Bronwyn's work speaks directly to policymakers, using the language and data they require. That is its strength.  Yet if geography becomes the sole lens through which veterinary access is understood, policy responses risk being partial.  

Investment in rural clinics alone will not close care deserts if:

• services remain unaffordable

• clinicians cannot be retained

• disability access is not designed in

• cultural safety is not prioritised

From a government perspective, access failures are not only an equity concern but a systemic risk. When veterinary care is only partially accessible, problems surface later and at greater cost. Delayed or foregone care means emerging animal health issues and biosecurity threats are detected later, reducing the effectiveness of early intervention. Ongoing workforce attrition quietly erodes surge capacity, leaving regions more vulnerable during emergencies, disease outbreaks, or climate-related events. Where trust in services is low, communities disengage altogether, further weakening surveillance and response. In this context, incomplete access is not a neutral gap. It is a compounding liability that undermines animal welfare, public confidence, and national preparedness.  

Framing veterinary care deserts solely as a rural issue also obscures a significant urban blind spot. In outer metropolitan suburbs, peri-urban growth corridors, and transport-poor areas, services may exist on paper but remain difficult or impossible to use in practice. Long travel times without reliable public transport, inflexible clinic hours, digital-only booking systems, and cost pressures can create access barriers that mirror those seen in remote regions. These are not fringe locations. They are areas of rapid population growth and increasing demand. Treating access as a rural problem alone risks overlooking substantial and politically relevant pockets of inaccessibility within cities themselves.  

If governments are to rely on this evidence for policy and planning, there is a corresponding responsibility to resource it properly. Meaningful progress will require coordinated leadership across government, the profession, and institutions, with shared accountability for data collection, interpretation, and action. Treating access mapping as essential infrastructure rather than discretionary research is a necessary step if solutions are to be durable rather than symbolic.  

What can the profession itself do? Turn proximity into access

Some of the most effective levers in closing veterinary care deserts do not begin with building new clinics. It begins with changing how existing ones meet people where they are.

Programs in veterinary social work and community-embedded models - such as Cherished Pets - show what becomes possible when care is designed around the realities of clients’ lives rather than the assumptions of the system.

By supporting people through financial pressure, housing instability, transport barriers, and complex family dynamics, these programs widen the doorway to care. They also do something less visible but just as important: they reduce moral distress among staff and rebuild trust between clinics and the communities they serve. This is access measured in relationships, not kilometres.

The same logic applies inside hundreds of practices themselves. Every clinic has a gap between being nearby and being usable. That gap is where non-geographic care deserts form.

Small, practical changes can close it. Offering more than one way to book. Communicating in formats that work for deaf and neurodivergent clients. Designing consult and treatment spaces that are physically accessible. Building flexibility into appointment structures. Being transparent and respectful about costs. These steps do not require new buildings. They require different defaults.

This is also workforce strategy. Clinics that are accessible to ageing, disabled, and caregiving veterinarians and nurses are more likely to retain experience, maintain continuity, and sustain services in high-need areas.

In this sense, access is not something the profession waits for governments to deliver. It is something it can build, clinic by clinic, policy by policy, interaction by interaction. That is how proximity becomes access.

Access on Paper, Not in Practice

In one outer-metropolitan community, a veterinary clinic could sit well within the 60-minute access zone. Yet for an older carer supporting a disabled family member, the only available appointments fall during work hours, bookings are online-only, and the consult room is physically difficult to navigate.

On the map, access exists. In practice, care has been deferred for months.

Final Thoughts

Australia now has its first national map of veterinary care deserts. That is a significant achievement.

The next step is to layer lived experience, workforce sustainability, and inclusion onto that map, so access is measured not only in kilometres, but in reality. Bronwyn's self-funded work gives the profession a long-needed map.  Now we need to add layers (preferably with funding).  Veterinary care deserts are not just places without clinics.  They are places where systems quietly fail certain communities.

In human health, aged care and disability policy, geographic definitions of access have largely been abandoned. Affordability, disability access, cultural safety, and continuity are now standard access metrics. Veterinary care has yet to begin this transition.  We do not need to reinvent the wheel, but close that gap.

Veterinary care deserts are not just places without clinics.  They are the downstream consequence of decisions about who systems are built for.

That is a conversation worth having.