Expanding Veterinary Social Work: How Social Work at WisCARES Community Veterinary Clinic Serves Low-Income and Homeless Pet Owners, Veterinary Staff, and Veterinary Students: Room C

Jennifer is a social worker with a practice background in child welfare, community organizing and development, and veterinary social work. She taught practice and social policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Jane Addams College of Social Work. She holds a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Kansas, and an MSW from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. She is Director of Social Work and Outreach at WisCARES, where she provides social work services for clients and staff, and is part of the interprofessional team that builds communication and teamwork skills for veterinary medical, social work, and pharmacy students.

Ruthanne is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. She completed a 1-year rotating internship in Small Animal Medicine and Surgery at Cornell University and then completed a comparative medical oncology residency at Purdue University. Ruthanne is a Clinical Professor in Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. She served as Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the UW SVM for 11 years and currently serves as Section Head of Medical Oncology, Chief of Large Animal Services and the Director of WisCARES. She has served as the president of the Veterinary Cancer Society, the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Specialty of Oncology, and the American Association of Veterinary Clinicians.  Within the UW SVM she works as a clinical oncologist and she co-chairs the Professional Skills Curriculum Development team.

Dr. Elizabeth (Liddy) Alvarez is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Primary Care Service where she has been teaching students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the past 16 years. Liddy graduated from Michigan State University with her DVM in 2003 and completed a rotating internship at Veterinary Specialty Center in Lynnwood, WA in 2007.  She also became a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners (canine and feline practice) in 2013. She is passionate about teaching the next generation of veterinarians to practice Primary Care through utilizing Spectrum of Care strategies and serves as Chair of both the AAVMC Primary Care Veterinary Educators (PCVE) community as well as the AAVMC Spectrum of Care Initiative (SOCI) Educator Working Group.

Liddy has been a part of building the UW-Madison outreach program, WisCARES (Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education, and Social Services) since its inception in 2014. WisCARES is a One Health program, a collaboration with the UW Schools of Social Work and Pharmacy established to help pet owners experiencing homelessness and housing instability increase access to animal and human healthcare and social services. She has served as Medical Director and is currently the Curriculum Director for WisCARES, where she focuses on the student experience, research, and obtaining grant funding for the program. In 2022 Liddy was awarded the UW-SVM inaugural Ruth M. Skaar Chair in Veterinary Medicine, a five-year endowed award focused on innovative teaching and education research and was named the prestigious AAVMC National Distinguished Veterinary Teacher award in 2023. Because of her work with interprofessional healthcare work through WisCARES, Dr. Alvarez was named the 2023 Distinguished Fellow in the National Academies of Practice (NAP). Distinguished practitioners and scholars are elected by their peers from multiple different health professions to join the only interprofessional group of healthcare practitioners and scholars dedicated to supporting affordable, accessible, coordinated quality healthcare for all.