IHAC's 2024 Year in Review

Remarks from Dr. Kevin Morris, IHAC Executive Director

"2024 was another big year at IHAC. We continue to be a leading education and research organization focused on how human-animal-environment interactions affect individual and community health from our social work framework. We’re presenting a few highlights from this year as we look toward 2025. We invite you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn so you can keep track of the many opportunities to connect with our team. I also invite you to support us through a tax-deductible donation to our education scholarships or research program. All of us at IHAC wish you a great 2025!"

2024 in Review

 This year, our educational programs, or IHACPro, served 178 students across 15 different cohorts in our certificates and courses. Some of these students are still engaged in cohorts going into the next year, but 127 students around the globe completed a certificate or course with us in 2024! Since rolling out our first cohort of Animals and Human Health in 2006, IHACPro has now served close to 1,300 students across 31 different countries. Our vast alumni network includes professionals working in a variety of human-animal interaction settings including therapeutic practices (e.g. mental health, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology), non-profits, schools, corporations, and many more. Additionally, we continued to support the Human-Animal-Envionment Interactions in Social Work certificate at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. Congratulations to the 2024 graduating class of students, many of whom have already begun their amazing work in human-animal interactions.

This was also another big year for IHAC’s research team. After reorganizing our research portfolio into two categories–-human-animal interactions and mental health and human-animal interactions and equity--we hit some important milestones and made some major contributions in both areas, including:

• We continued our research at Green Chimneys aimed at understanding how their animal-assisted interventions and the entire Green Chimneys experience affect positive youth development. Toward that, we published the validation of our use – for the first time ever with a clinically-defined population – of the positive youth development instrument. We also launched a program focused on translating the research findings and tools to inform how the clinicians incorporate Green Chimney’s nature-based programs into their work with individual students.

• We recently launched data collection for our study aimed at understanding how service dogs affect symptoms for veterans with post-traumatic stress. This study combines IHAC’s expertise in human-animal interventions with cutting-edge molecular biology to understand how the dogs reduce symptoms. Just as importantly, the study also aims to understand the physiological impacts of this type of work on the dogs themselves, so we can optimize protocols for their health and well-being.

• We presented the initial findings from our analysis of data on over one million animal control cases provided by four agencies at the HSUS Animal Care Expo and the Best Friends Conference. We are finding that there are more cases and punitive outcomes in historically marginalized communities. This study is being finalized with the addition of data from two more agencies. We have also completed data collection with a survey designed to gather input from animal control officers on community engagement policies and practices. The findings from this unique portfolio of research will be presented at conferences and in manuscripts in the upcoming year.

• We have continued our work with PetSmart Charities to create new access to animal care programs. The addition of ten new grantees in the last year continued to highlight how the resident-identified needs vary dramatically across different communities.

 Our research team grew as we welcomed Jenni Forkin as our 2024/25 IHAC Research Fellow and Sasha Piña and Lauren Loney as new IHAC Research Associates. We have an amazing group of interns and graduate research assistants who are making significant contributions to the research. We all worked together to host Jess Sparks--an IHAC alumna from Tufts University--to present a seminar on her research and advocacy around labor abuses in the fishing industry and Megan Mueller--also from Tufts University--to present a seminar on human-animal interactions and youth development.

Looking Forward to 2025

As we move into 2025, we are excited for the many new and continuing research projects, educational programs, and events offered by IHAC. From April 25 to 26, we are partnering with Green Chimneys to co-host the bi-annual Human-Animal Interaction Conference in Brewster, New York. This year’s theme is “People, Animals and Nature: The Restorative Power of Relationship.” Come see us at the IHAC table and be sure to check out Kevin Morris and Nina Ekholm Fry’s keynote address, “Training and Professionalizing for the Future.”

2025 will also be a big year for IHACPro. We will be rolling out a series of webinars focused on specific topics within human-animal interactions. We have also been hard at work re-designing and re-structuring our Humane Education Practitioner certificate. We plan to roll-out the new education certificate in the next calendar year! Additionally, we have been developing a brand-new portfolio of courses for animal welfare and sheltering professionals that will be available later in 2025. Finally, we will be releasing a new course in equines and human services. Stay tuned for these new offerings!

Additionally, the research team will continue to push IHAC’s innovative studies forward over the next year. We will also be attending and presenting at conferences, including the HSUS Animal Care Expo and the Assistance Dogs International Conference, so please say hello if you come across us. We will be continuing our IHAC Research Seminar Series in 2025, starting with Lauren Loney speaking about her research and advocacy work around pets and affordable housing issues on January 29th. Please join us in person or virtually to hear about her important work toward keeping families together.

Thank you for supporting IHAC and we hope you have a great 2025!