Dr Alex Harrison, 2025 AVA President’s Award recipient
July is Disability Pride Month – a global opportunity to promote awareness and celebrate people with a disability. This year’s theme, “We belong here, and we’re here to stay”, resonates for the veterinary profession, with the 2023 AVA Workforce Survey revealing 38% of veterinarians identify as having a disability, chronic illness or neurodivergence.
A leading voice in this space is Dr Alex Harrison, a passionate advocate for disability inclusion and systemic change in veterinary medicine. For Alex, Disability Pride is not just about being proud of being disabled, but also celebrating presence and resilience, and challenging ableism and myths around disability.
“Disability Pride in our profession means valuing disabled vets, nurses, students, and clients – not in spite of disability, but with full recognition of the strength, insight, and access wisdom we bring to this profession,” Alex explains.
“For many of us, pride sits alongside pain – of access barriers, of being underestimated, of fighting to belong in a profession that wasn’t built with us in mind. And we celebrate anyway. Because our presence and insights matter. Every time we show up, we expand what’s possible for this profession.”
Alex’s journey to Disability Pride began several years ago, in the aftermath of a defining, perspective-shifting experience.
“I suffered full blown burnout from trying to do it all and prove that I could do everything – so that I could earn my place in the profession. It led to a realisation that I had internalised ableism and it was driven from a place of trying to make that part of who I was as small as possible. It took me getting to a point where I fell asleep from exhaustion at the wheel of the car with my wife and young daughters inside, to realise that this was the effect that suppressing that part of my identity was having on me.”
“As I interrogated that, I began to realise I had to push back against the unspoken conventions that disability has to be seen as something to make small or to be ashamed of. Disability Pride is the antidote to that.”
As he shared in his acceptance speech for the 2025 AVA President’s Award, Disability Pride is about embracing the possibility of a profession that welcomes everyone.
“You are not the exception. You are part of what is changing, and what must continue to change. I want you to hear this: you are not on the margins. You belong here, fully and without condition.”
This message is at the heart of Alex’s recent webinar, Inclusive Design and Accessibility in Vet Clinics: Simple Changes, Big Impact, now available on demand and free for all AVA members.