USDA USDA-NIFA-VSGP-010340: 2024 Veterinary Services Grant Program (VSGP)

Limit: 1 // L. Clark (Veterinary Medicine)

For RPE, duplicate or multiple submissions are not allowed. NIFA will disqualify both applications if an RPE applicant submits duplicate or multiple submissions. For EET, multiple submissions are allowed by different departments of eligible institutions.

Veterinarians play significant roles in assuring food and fiber animal health and wellbeing, food safety and security, public health, and producer profitability, especially in rural areas of the United States where mostlivestock production occurs. The VSGP, Assistance Listing 10.336 and its companion Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP), authorized by the National Veterinary Medical Services Act (NVMSA), were born out of concerns that long-term maldistributions in the veterinary workforce have left some rural communities with insufficient access to food/large animal veterinary services. The objective of the VSGP is to develop, implement, and sustain food animal veterinary services and relieve veterinarian shortage situations in the United States, which includes Insular Areas.

The purpose of VSGP is to complement the VMLRP to address this veterinary shortage problem through two types of grants.
1. Education, extension, and training (EET) grants are initiatives that will enable veterinarians, veterinary students, veterinary technicians, and veterinary technician students to gain specialized skills through formal coursework, clinical training, and practice enhancement to mitigate veterinary service shortages more effectively in the United States and Insular Areas.
2. Rural practice enhancement (RPE) grants ultimately bolster the capacity of a private clinic (with or without a veterinarian’s student loan repayment obligation) that can provide food/large animal veterinary services for a designated veterinarian shortage area.