Veterinarians do far more than treat pets. They track disease outbreaks, inspect food systems, respond to natural disasters and work on the front lines of the connection between human and animal health. 

For a growing number of them, the credential that opens those doors is a dual degree: Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Master of Public Health. Cornell DVM students Zachary Bisconti and Jake Sarno are earning their MPH through the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health while still in veterinary school.

“Doing an MPH alongside the DVM program was a good way to be able to work with multiple species through veterinary medicine, study many different aspects of biology, and at the same time see how it fits into the broader context of public health,” says Sarno, who wants to pursue biomedical research across both human and animal populations.

Bisconti, from the Boston area, had long wanted to work with free-ranging wildlife, and prospective state wildlife veterinarians kept telling him that an MPH in Veterinary Public Health was essential. The two roommates discovered the MPH program through a recommendation from a fellow Cornell student. 

The predominantly online program is designed to be completed alongside a DVM in the same four years, with credits transferring between the two programs and resident-rate tuition for every student regardless of where they live. Students come to Minnesota for the three-week Public Health Institute.

“It shaped the way I’ve thought about public health in the sense that public health in the veterinary school curriculum is very much shared in the epidemiological lens,” says Bisconti about the MPH program. “What are zoonotic diseases? How are they spread? What can we do to prevent that? It really helped illustrate to me how important human health is to animal health.”

The coursework itself covered a wide range of disciplines.

“We did everything from computer programming and biostatistics to field work in epidemiology and food safety,” Sarno says. “The interconnectedness of animal health and human health is evident in the field of food safety—one of the major interfaces between veterinary medicine and public health.”

Both used their MPH capstone requirements to extend international fieldwork for which they'd received separate Cornell funding. Bisconti spent a summer in Nepal drawing blood from goat herds to assess a viral disease, then turned the data into an executive report. Sarno traveled to South Africa to research a novel antivenom derived from snake blood, which evolved into a review of antivenom supply chains and human-wildlife conflict.

They both credit the program’s flexibility, the depth and breadth of its coursework and the people behind it for making it work.  

“They 100 percent do everything that they possibly can to make it manageable within the veterinary curricular framework,” says Bisconti. “I think the people make the program, and the professors and the people organizing this program are phenomenal.”

Long term, Bisconti wants to start in clinical practice with small animals and exotics before moving toward government or nonprofit work on wildlife reintroduction in the United States.

Sarno is heading into the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, a specialized branch that uses veterinary medical science to safeguard animal health, food protection, public health, and biomedical research.

“As an officer in the veterinary corps, you actually support the military’s public health mission,” he says. “Not only can you practice clinical medicine, but you can also support the men and women of the military.”

For Bisconti, the program did more than build credentials.

“I feel like I was bestowed an opportunity to set myself apart and also learn about myself and figure out what I wanted to do,” he says.

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