The Healthy Pets, Healthy People Project
The Healthy Pets, Healthy People project was created in 1997 by Dr. Stephanie Wong to help answer some of the most common questions about pet ownership by immunocompromised persons.
The Healthy Pets, Healthy People project has been upgraded from an LGVMA-sponsored initiative to a full-blown CDC-sponsored and -hosted initiative. For more, visit www.cdc.gov/healthypets.
HPHP Origins related to LGVMA
Dr. Stephanie Wong's inspiration for the HPHP project sprang from a summer externship in 1997 with then-LGVMA President Dr. Michael McElavine at the USDA in Washington DC. The following spring, she completed a senior externship focusing on public health and the human/animal bond with Pets Are Wonderful Support in San Francisco, where she met former LGVMA President and PAWS founder Dr. Ken Gorzcya.During these two experiences, Stephanie discovered there was a plethora of information out there regarding pet ownership by immunocompromised persons but there was no easy way for health professionals or regular citizens to easily locate the information they needed.
Hoping to create a "one-stop" resource for health professionals to locate the information they needed to help their patients, Stephanie set out to pull together information on diseases that compromise the human immune system, the main pet-related zoonoses of concern, safe pet guidelines, and an extensive list of current resources on the health risks and benefits of pets to immunocompromised persons.
She returned to Washington in the fall of 1998 for an externship with the FDA, during which she, Dr. McElvaine and new LGVMA President Dr. Tim Withers met with the AVMA President Dr. Richard Swanson to discuss the HPHP project. Based on these experiences, LGVMA became an active sponsor of the HPHP project, proudly following Stephanie's experiences at the 1998 National AIDS Update Conference in San Francisco and the 1998 World AIDS Conference in Geneva.
Along with today's LGVMA President, Dr. Sara White, Stephanie was one of the recipients of the LGVMA Student Scholarship awards in 1998. After graduating from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in 1999, Stephanie made a presentation of her evolving HPHP project at the LGVMA Annual Meeting and with LGVMA's proud support, attended the 2000 World AIDS Conference in South Africa.
Bringing her project to its logical conclusion, Stephanie obtained a position at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000. At the CDC, the project grew beyond its original scope to become a comprehensive, easy-to-use guide for general zoonoses information, while still retaining a focus as a valuable "one-stop" resource for health professionals.
World AIDS Conference 2000 - A report from Dr. Wong
You can still access the information provided in the former Healthy Pets Healthy People section by following the links below.