CAROW Seed Grant to Fund Study of Veterinarians’ Mental Health

Duanyi Yang and Brittany Bond, assistant professors at the ILR School, have been awarded a seed grant from ILR’s Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) to examine how private equity leveraged buyouts are associated with changes in workers’ mental health, job quality and care quality in veterinary clinics – a rapidly growing but understudied segment of the healthcare economy.

“Private equity has become an increasingly influential force in the U.S. economy, reshaping the employment relationship across healthcare and many other industries,” Yang said. “Yet we still know relatively little about what these changes mean for workers. This gap is especially consequential in labor-intensive and relational settings such as veterinary clinics, where the quality of care depends heavily on workers’ expertise, professional judgment and relationships with clients and animals. 

“By examining how private equity ownership affects job quality – including workload, scheduling stability, compensation, job security, work meaning and opportunities for worker voice – our research seeks to clarify how changes in ownership redistribute risks, resources and decision-making power within the workplace, with consequences for both workers and the quality of care.”

Historically organized as small, independently owned practices led by veterinarian-owners, veterinary clinics have increasingly been consolidated by private equity firms. Generally operating with relatively thin margins and limited physical assets, reductions in staffing, work intensification, standardization of protocols, and changes to scheduling and compensation may constitute some of the key mechanisms through which private equity ownership affects both workers and care provision.

Yang and Bond will study how these changes affect mental health – a serious issue in the industry, as the suicide rate among veterinarians, one extreme downstream consequence of chronic, unmanaged burnout, is more than twice that of other medical professionals and approximately four times higher than that of the general population. 

“Duanyi and I have spent the past several years studying burnout in veterinary clinics, including how changes to the organization of work can improve their jobs,” Bond said. “That research has shown how strongly burnout depends on the conditions under which veterinary professionals work. 

“This new project takes that research upstream by examining whether and how private equity ownership intensifies the workplace conditions that contribute to burnout across the veterinary workforce. By tracing how private equity ownership reshapes these conditions, we hope to identify emerging sources of risk and reduce burnout.”

The project will compile evidence that employers, professional associations and policymakers can use to identify organizational drivers of mental health risk and improve workplace conditions in veterinary medicine and other care-oriented sectors. Moreover, the researchers will develop a Mental Health Improvement Toolkit for all participants, providing a direct mechanism for reducing burnout.

“Support from CAROW allows us to launch a mixed-methods study of these questions in veterinary clinics, combining worker surveys with in-depth interviews,” Yang said. “Just as importantly, the grant will create meaningful opportunities for ILR undergraduate and graduate students to participate in survey design, data collection, interviewing, analysis and the translation of research findings into practical guidance. This support will help us build a broader platform for research, student training and public engagement that can inform workers, employers, professional associations and policymakers well beyond the veterinary sector.”