Interview! Laura Mullen, SPORE Program Director at San Francisco SPCA

Laura Mullen has worked in the shelter medicine department at the San Francisco SPCA for 15 years. Her current project is the SPORE Program, or Shelters Preventing Outbreaks of Ringworm through Eductation.

Ringworm is a pesky fungal infection that lives on the keratin in animal hair and nails—one could call it “cathlete’s foot!” Though it’s not a life threatening condition, it can wreak havoc on animal shelters, especially those without proper resources for treating and preventing it. Backed by the Maddie’s Fund, SPORE seeks to provide those resources through treatment and prevention education and research initiatives. SFSPCA takes in known ringworm animals from other municipal shelters and screens them using in-house cultures to determine the level of infection and, subsequently, the level of treatment required for eradicating the problem. SFSPCA then teaches those shelters best practices for quarantining and monitoring animals exposed to ringworm, as well as proper preventative measures against recurrent outbreaks.

To learn more about SPORE or the 3-day SPORE apprenticeship offered later this summer, please email Laura Mullen at lmullen@sfspca.org.