A graduate certificate for DVMs and non-DVMs in allied animal industries.
What is a graduate certificate?
A graduate certificate is an additional qualification awarded by Iowa State University after successful completion of 15 graduate level credits. As such the graduate certificate requires less course work than a Masters (30+ credits) level program. The Veterinary Preventive Medicine Certificate is a distance program and all courses are taken online.
What is Veterinary Preventive Medicine?
Veterinary Preventive Medicine is a very diverse area. Students in the program are able to include courses in areas of animal welfare, diagnostics, food safety, evidence-based medicine, surgery, pathology, microbiology, epidemiology, public health, statistics and production medicine. Students can choose courses that focus on any of these disciplines. For example, students can focus on:
Epidemiology: Epidemiology focuses on the understanding the causes and control of diseases of companion, food producing and wild animals. Epidemiologists also study the costs of epidemic and endemic diseases of animals, disease control or eradication by public veterinary services, relationships between veterinary medicine and animal production, and development of new techniques in diagnosing, recording, evaluating and controlling diseases in animal populations.
Risk assessment: Risk assessment involves analyzing and quantifying the causal pathway of events that may lead to negative outcomes in animals or humans. This technique is useful for decision makers trying to decide among various risk mitigation or animal health management options. Risk assessment serves as the conduit for bringing all applicable science to the policy arena.
Animal Welfare: Animal welfare studies aim to develop sound scientific measures for animal well-being, through a multi disciplinary approach utilizing: physiology, immunology, neuroscience, cognitive abilities, behavior, epidemiology, performance and health.