Colorado passed Proposition 129 in November 2024, creating the Veterinary Professional Associate (VPA), a new master's-level mid-level practitioner role in veterinary medicine. The vote established the role in state law, but a VPA cannot practice without a licensing exam. That piece moved forward on June 11, when the Colorado State Board of Veterinary Medicine voted to advance the American Association of Veterinary State Boards (AAVSB) as developer of the VPA licensing examination, according to dvm360.
The decision was not uncontested: AAVSB's own board had adopted a resolution in September 2025 opposing endorsement of the VPA role, and the Colorado board's rulemaking process drew 44 public comments split between backing AAVSB and recommending an alternative, including the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC) and the International Council on Veterinary Assessment. The board opted to move forward with AAVSB anyway, forming a subcommittee to draft a memorandum of understanding rather than reopening a lengthy request-for-proposals process. There is no VPA without a licensure pathway, and there is no licensure pathway without a credentialing exam. This vote is what moves the concept forward, even if the path to it wasn't unanimous.
What the VPA Role Is Designed to Do
The VPA is designed to operate with indirect supervision from a licensed veterinarian, handling a defined scope of clinical tasks: routine exams, certain diagnostics, and select treatment protocols. The role sits between a credentialed veterinary technician and a full DVM, more autonomous than a credentialed veterinary technician (CrVT), with a defined scope ceiling below the veterinarian's full authority.
Colorado State University is developing a five-semester master's program for VPA candidates. The first class is expected to enroll in fall 2026.
Colorado is the first state to create this role via ballot initiative, but the underlying tension it addresses, a shortage of licensed veterinary professionals that constrains care access, is not unique to Colorado. If the model works, other states will be watching closely.
VPAs are still several years from the hiring pipeline. The exam development is assigned but not complete. CSU's program has not graduated its first class. The regulatory and credentialing apparatus is still being built. That gives practice owners time to think through the questions that matter before hiring time, not during it.
Start with staffing model: a VPA working autonomously within a defined scope could free DVM time for complex cases and surgery, particularly in general practice settings where a large portion of daily caseload is routine, and for practices already relying heavily on experienced CrVTs at the top of their scope, a VPA extends that same logic one step further. A VPA pipeline would arrive on top of a hiring landscape that's already growing and stalling in uneven ways, so practices should monitor which states move next. Legislative activity around mid-level practitioner roles has been active in multiple states, and Proposition 129 was contested enough that not every ballot initiative elsewhere will succeed the same way, but the momentum behind scope-of-practice modernization in vet med is real. Practices that use this lead time to work out scope expectations, supervision structure, and compensation for a mid-level role will be the ones ready to move when candidates actually start arriving.
AAVSB Selection Turns the VPA From Law Into Credentialing Infrastructure
The AAVSB vote does not put a single VPA into a clinic. What it does is establish that the licensing infrastructure will be built. Colorado passed a law. Now someone is building the exam that makes the law operable. The concept has just started turning into credentialing, a moment practices should keep on their radar.