BEVA on the world stage

The British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA) is one of the largest equine veterinary organisations in the world, second only to the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP). BEVA now has over 4,000 members, which includes around 1,000 student members, and is run very efficiently by an executive of 16 staff and a CEO. With this considerable backing, the association has built up a substantial body of resources for its membership, a significant part of which is its CPD programme.

While our CPD programme has traditionally been centred on in-person courses, the association started developing an online platform to deliver material remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a relatively new way of delivering CPD at the time, but it became more popular as the technology available received a substantial boost during the pandemic.

Now the online component makes up a significant proportion of the free member benefits, alongside the clinical catch-ups and the transatlantic clinics. These continue to be popular, with more than 3,000 registrations from 41 different countries this year. Add the many online-only courses to that, and you can appreciate there is a substantial body of material available to BEVA members online – in fact, more than 300 hours’ worth. BEVA is, not surprisingly, proud of this content, which is overseen and constantly updated through the efforts of BEVA’s head of education, Dr Sarah Gasper.

BEVA now has over 4,000 members, which includes around 1,000 student members, and is run very efficiently by an executive of 16 staff and a CEO

For many equine veterinary associations in smaller countries this is an enviable output, as most do not have the resources to provide similar benefits for their membership. Consequently, a few years ago BEVA launched an affiliate programme to make our resources available to a larger audience around the world. The programme offers a 50 percent discount on BEVA membership for those who are already members of their national association and provides all the benefits that BEVA membership brings. These benefits include access to our online journals as well as our CPD library, other online BEVA resources (of which there are many!) and membership fees for our annual congress.

This arrangement prevents BEVA from competing against national associations for membership and can actually be helpful in assisting our partner associations with increasing their own membership. In addition, through our sponsored and highly successful student membership programme, we have been able to extend free student membership to those associations as well – an important component of BEVA’s efforts to encourage the next generation of veterinarians to become equine vets.

One of our main challenges has been making international veterinary associations aware of this programme, and to this end, BEVA’s previous president, David Rendle, and I have worked on expanding the uptake of this opportunity. It has, therefore, been immensely satisfying to see that over the past two years, the number of national associations who have signed up to the programme has risen to 23 (Table 1).

Our affiliated membership has exponentially grown from small beginnings to almost 200 members (Figure 1). This is still a relatively small number, but we expect it to gradually increase with further associations wanting to join, thereby placing BEVA at the centre of a global community.

An additional challenge has been making the material more user-friendly for countries where English is not widely spoken. We are currently developing automated translation for the material, which will initially provide simultaneous subtitles, with the intention of progressing to simultaneous translation. This is because this technology is continuing to develop fast with increasing accuracy – quite important for teaching subjects accurately and preventing misinterpretation and, therefore, mistakes! We believe that this will make the programme even more popular.

Unsurprisingly, many other countries have the same values and priorities as us, as well as similar challenges

During my presidential year, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of international equine veterinary associations. The universal warmth of their welcome and the respect and appreciation for what BEVA does has been immensely satisfying to experience. Throughout my career, I have always felt at home in the equine veterinary community, and BEVA epitomises many of the good things within our profession.

Unsurprisingly, many other countries have the same values and priorities as us, as well as similar challenges. As an example, at my recent visit to the Bain-Fallon conference (one that has been on my bucket list since I was a student!), I was honoured to be included in a panel discussion on “The current crisis of recruitment and retention”, joining Katie Garrett, president of the AAEP, and Peter Morresey from the USA; Cristy Secombe from Australia; and Rachael Smith from New Zealand. It was very clear from this discussion that similar problems in this area exist in most countries and that we should indeed be sharing our resources to help with this crisis.

In a world where there seems to be a resurgence of intolerance and strife, it is good to see that […] BEVA has developed warm and functional connections with a large number of international equine veterinary communities

In a world where there seems to be a resurgence of intolerance and strife, it is good to see that, albeit involving a small area of society, BEVA has developed warm and functional connections with a large number of international equine veterinary communities. We hope this mutual respect and collaboration will be a force for good when it comes to facilitating positive change for the benefit of horses worldwide.