Critically Diverse

Critically Diverse Elevating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in veterinary medicine
All are welcome here ❤️ Our goal is to:

1.

Veterinary medicine is one of the least racially diverse professions in the United States. The veterinary population is 86% white, 5% hispanic, 3% black and 3% other. Although 65% of veterinarians are female there continues to be a significant gender pay gap. It is evident that we can no longer ignore the inequalities and struggles that minorities face in our profession. We must actively participate in bridging the gap on inequality, supporting the minorities amongst our ranks and creating a safe haven where diversity can flourish, be embraced and celebrated. Inspire and encourage underrepresented populations/identities as members of ACVECC and in veterinary medicine as a whole.

2. Create a safe environment in which to engage in conversations around race, diversity, and equity.

3. Promote diversity and inclusion education and resources regarding anti-racist, LGBTQIA, women's rights, religious and disability justice education.

4. Create an environment where people feel safe, heard, valued, and respected.

Midterms decide more than you think: every House seat, a third of the Senate, most governors, and the local races that h...
10/22/2026

Midterms decide more than you think: every House seat, a third of the Senate, most governors, and the local races that hit your life fastest.

A lot changed since 2024. Postmark rules, ID rules, court decisions. Here’s what actually matters before Nov 3, plus a plan you can save. 🗳️

Voting by mail? Get it in the mail by Oct 27, or use a drop box.

Problems at the polls: 866-OUR-VOTE
español: 888-VE-Y-VOTA

Rules vary by state. Confirm yours at vote.gov.

More than 1 in 5 US women have experienced completed or attempted r**e. On college campuses, it’s 1 in 4 undergraduate w...
10/06/2026

More than 1 in 5 US women have experienced completed or attempted r**e. On college campuses, it’s 1 in 4 undergraduate women. For every 1,000 sexual assaults, an estimated 25 perpetrators ever see a cell. Meanwhile, confirmed false reports sit around 5%, yet survivors are still treated as the suspects.

Add an online pipeline that teaches boys resentment, and a Title IX rule that just made the weaker floor official. One case didn’t create this. A system did.

Here’s what the evidence also shows. When coaches and peers lead the conversation, perpetration drops. Not by accident, but because men decided to step in.

Not participating is the floor. Protecting is the job. Swipe through, save it, and share it with the men in your life. 🧵

Need support? RAINN: 1-800-656-4673 · rainn.org

Hispanic Heritage Month wraps up October 15, so let’s talk about something every shift runs into: language access.In a n...
10/01/2026

Hispanic Heritage Month wraps up October 15, so let’s talk about something every shift runs into: language access.

In a national survey of US small animal practices, 89% had Spanish-speaking clients with limited English proficiency, and over half saw them every week. Only 8% had staff who could hold a conversation in Spanish.

So who interprets? The client’s kid. A neighbor on speaker. An app. In human pediatric ERs, untrained interpreters made clinically consequential errors as often as having no interpreter at all. We don’t have that data in vet med yet. That gap is part of the story.

The fix starts small: ask every client what language they prefer for their pet’s health information, and write it in the chart.

Because consent you can’t understand isn’t consent.

👉 How does your hospital handle language access? Comments open, in English or Spanish.

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Cerramos el Mes de la Herencia Hispana hablando de algo que vemos en cada turno: el acceso al idioma. El 89% de las clínicas encuestadas en EE.UU. atiende a familias hispanohablantes con inglés limitado, pero solo el 8% tiene personal que habla español. Un consentimiento que no se entiende no es consentimiento. ¿Cómo lo manejan en su hospital? Cuéntennos.

Gloria Steinem died yesterday at 92. If you’re in vet med and haven’t heard her name outside a poli-sci class, here’s th...
09/03/2026

Gloria Steinem died yesterday at 92. If you’re in vet med and haven’t heard her name outside a poli-sci class, here’s the short version.

She started as a journalist, went undercover in the Pl***oy Club in the 60s to expose how it actually treated women, and never really stopped after that. Co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1972 when almost no mainstream outlet would run stories about equal pay or reproductive rights without a punchline attached. Co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus. Spent the next five decades on the road, at rallies, on campuses, in rooms where she wasn’t wanted, arguing that women’s rights are human rights and saying it before it was a slogan.

She didn’t finish the fight.

Nobody does. Our profession is proof of that: majority female for almost two decades now, and still fewer women in the dean’s office, still fewer women owning the practice, still a pay gap once you control for role and hours. Steinem gave a few generations the language and the permission to say that gap out loud. What happens next isn’t nostalgia, it’s on us.

Rest in power, Gloria.

Pride started as a riot. Not a parade. Not a brand campaign. A riot started by drag queens, trans women of color, and ho...
06/25/2026

Pride started as a riot. Not a parade. Not a brand campaign. A riot started by drag queens, trans women of color, and homeless q***r youth who had nothing left to lose and nowhere else to go.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera built the first shelter for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in North America out of that uprising. They paid the rent by working the streets. Four years later, the same movement they helped start banned drag queens from its parade for making gay people look bad.

This pattern repeats. In every liberation movement, at some point the people who made it possible get pushed offstage when institutions start trying to look respectable.

Stonewall Day is June 28. Know the full story.

123 million displaced people. Their animals aren’t in the humanitarian response plan.Veterinary medicine isn’t at that t...
06/23/2026

123 million displaced people. Their animals aren’t in the humanitarian response plan.

Veterinary medicine isn’t at that table either, and that’s not an accident. It’s a policy blind spot that costs lives on both sides.

Veterinarians can predict zoonotic spillover in crowded camps. Vets understand what livestock means to survival when everything else is gone. Vets have the training to integrate animal health into One Health frameworks from day one. And the UN, UNHCR, and camp planning committees keep running these responses without them.

This is a structural absence, not a resource problem.

If you work in vet medicine: your credibility matters in spaces that don’t think they need it yet. Organizations like FOUR PAWS, IFAW, and Sulala (Gaza’s only animal rescue) are working on the ground because policy won’t. That’s where vet leadership happens.

If you teach or lead in your institution: animal health in displacement belongs in your curriculum. It belongs in professional development. It belongs in how you train people to think about scope.

This isn’t charity. This is One Health the way it’s supposed to work. And vet med has the power to demand a seat at the table.

Read the full breakdown in the carousel. Then ask your institution, your professional organization, and yourself: what changes if we actually act like we’re needed?

May 17. IDAHOBIT.The day the WHO took LGBTQ out of the disease manual in 1990. The day so many countries still pretend t...
05/17/2026

May 17. IDAHOBIT.

The day the WHO took LGBTQ out of the disease manual in 1990. The day so many countries still pretend that decision never happened.

The 2026 theme is “At the Heart of Democracy”, and it lands hard this year. While we post, 64 UN member states still criminalize same-sex relationships, 7 carry the death penalty, and over 525 anti-LGBTQ bills are moving through US legislatures right now.

Mali criminalized this past year.
Trinidad and Tobago reversed decriminalization.
Kansas invalidated trans driver’s licenses overnight.

Our profession isn’t outside of any of this. Over half of LGBTQ+ veterinary professionals and students surveyed in the UK have experienced or witnessed workplace discrimination. Higher rates of suicidal ideation. Reporting pathways most people don’t know exist.

And our clients walk in carrying it too.
The name on the credit card.
The chart that doesn’t match the face.
The assumption about which one is the dad.

Democracy isn’t built in capitals. It’s built in waiting rooms, exam rooms, classrooms. In whose name gets called out loud, and whose family gets to be assumed without a flinch.

Swipe through. Then look at your forms Monday morning.

Le***an Visibility Week | April 20-26This week is for you.Vet med is a profession that is majority women, and significan...
04/26/2026

Le***an Visibility Week | April 20-26

This week is for you.

Vet med is a profession that is majority women, and significantly more LGBTQ+ than the general population.

About 7% of veterinary professionals identify as LGBTQIA+, roughly twice the national average.

When you factor in that nearly 63% of veterinarians are women, the math suggests a meaningful concentration of le***an, bisexual, and q***r women in this field.

And yet: 45% of LGBTQ+ veterinary professionals have experienced difficulties related to sexual orientation or gender identity in professional settings.

Not students.
Professionals.
People who are already in the building.

The most common difficulties reported were exposure to homophobic language, pressure around staying closeted, and negative emotional outcomes.

The most common resolution?

Unresolved. Or they just changed jobs.

Representation without psychological safety isn’t inclusion. It’s just numbers.

This week, if you lead a team: look at the gap between how many q***r women work for you and how many of them feel safe enough to be fully out.

That gap is the work.

***anVisibilityWeek DiversityInVetMed

Today is World Veterinary Day. The 2026 theme is “Veterinarians: Guardians of Food and Health,” and it’s accurate.Veteri...
04/26/2026

Today is World Veterinary Day.

The 2026 theme is “Veterinarians: Guardians of Food and Health,” and it’s accurate.

Veterinarians helped eradicate rinderpest, a disease that destabilized food systems for centuries. They are on the frontline of antimicrobial resistance, which already kills more people than HIV and malaria combined. 75% of emerging infectious diseases originate in animals, and vets are often the first to notice.

The profession is doing extraordinary work. It is also doing it unevenly. 93.8% of animals living more than an hour from veterinary care are in low and middle-income countries. Africa averages 1 vet per 100,000 livestock! The ratio in some African countries is 20 times lower than in high-income countries.

A profession that protects global food systems needs to be everywhere those systems are under pressure.

Swipe through.
The celebration is real.
So is the work left to do.

Black Maternal Health Week starts this Saturday. The theme is “Rooted in Justice and Joy”.The CDC just dropped 2024 data...
04/11/2026

Black Maternal Health Week starts this Saturday. The theme is “Rooted in Justice and Joy”.

The CDC just dropped 2024 data showing Black women are dying at 44.8 per 100,000 live births. Three times the rate for white women. The only group whose numbers didn’t decline. 87% of these deaths were preventable.

Both things are true at the same time.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about clarity. The same system that dismisses Black women in obstetric triage dismisses Black clients in our field and Black colleagues in the break room. If you work in healthcare, this is not someone else’s problem to solve.

Learn the data. Support the movement. Audit your practice.

Happy . Honor it like a it matters.

MaternalMortality

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