About Us

The Student Veterinary Emergency Response Team (sVERT) at the University of California, Davis, provides veterinary students the opportunity to supplement their education with hands-on training and experience in disaster medicine. There is minimal room in the current curriculum at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine to discuss emergency response and disaster preparedness in spite of being an important responsibility of veterinarians worldwide. Our Special Studies Program (SSP) aims to fill this gap in knowledge. This course, which has been offered and refined over the past seven years, is designed for students interested in disaster response, public health, and other safety interests. The goals of SSP are twofold: (1) to provide veterinary students with the knowledge and practical training to engage with and serve the community in the event of a disaster, and (2) to establish a basic skill set that can be utilized by a veterinary student during a disaster response. sVERT offers two year-long SSP courses, SSP1 and SSP2, both of which include evening and weekend sessions that incorporate didactic and hands-on learning. Enrolled 1st and 2nd year students learn skills from a mixed animal perspective to match real-life situations. Upon program completion, students become Disaster Service Workers and members of the California Veterinary Emergency Team which allows them to respond to statewide disasters during vet school and after graduation.