In the Community

April 9, 2007

Passion for Pet Safety

The Pet Safety Guide, created by a Kaiser Permanente epidemiologist who is also a veterinarian, aims to help pediatricians better educate their patients — and their parents — about how to avoid pet-related injuries.

Oakland, Calif. —Kaiser Permanente pediatricians in Northern California are rolling out an innovative pet-safety awareness project that offers families tips on everything from approaching strange pets to teaching children how to safely interact with the family dog or cat.

The Healthy Living Pet Safety Guide was created by Michele Manos, PhD, MPH, DVM, an epidemiologist in the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research who is also a veterinarian.

With help from Kaiser Permanente's Health Education department in Northern California and KP pediatricians, Dr. Manos developed the colorful pet-safety guide and tip sheet that will be made available to every pediatrician in Northern California. There are plans to make the guide available to all Kaiser Permanente members through their physicians' home pages on www.kp.org/mydoctor.

Children receive almost half of the 4.5 million dog bites that occur each year, according to the Veterinary Medical Association of America. One way to reduce that number is through educating people about how and why bites happen, and how to prevent them.

"The veterinarians think the pediatricians take care of it and the pediatricians think the veterinarians take care of it," Dr. Manos said.

Dr. Manos is in an ideal position to bridge the gap between the animal and human medical worlds in order to reduce animal-related injuries and infections. She started her medical career as a laboratory scientist, received a master's degree in public health, and then received a veterinary degree from UC Davis, the largest veterinary school in the United States and consistently ranked among the best such schools.

While Dr. Manos said she certainly enjoys clinical veterinary practice, she's most interested in studying how animal health, particular among wildlife, intersects with the health of the human population. She said she plans to next develop a tip sheet for new parents bringing their baby back to a home with a pet.

Edward Martin, MD, chair of the Chiefs of Pediatrics for The Permanente Medical Group, helped develop the tip sheet. The pediatrician's office, he said, is a logical place for pet-safety discussions to occur.

"Pediatricians traditionally spend a lot of time counseling patients and their families on safety and injury prevention," Dr. Martin said. Parents, understandably, are often quite worried about whether dog or cat bites might lead to scarring or rabies.

The Pet Safety Guide also includes tips on how people can avoid diseases that humans can catch from insects, wildlife, reptiles, and parasites that can infect their pets.