Dr. Kate Creevy wins 2026 AVMA Career Achievement in Canine Research Award

(SCHAUMBURG, Illinois) June 24, 2026-The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has named Dr. Kate Creevy, DVM, MS, DACVIM, professor of small animal internal medicine at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and chief veterinary officer of the Dog Aging Project, as the winner of the 2026 AVMA Career Achievement in Canine Research Award.

This award honors an AVMA member's long-term contribution to the field of canine research. The AVMA Council on Research selects the recipient.

"This recognition is deeply meaningful to me," said Dr. Creevy. "It's a privilege to work with both our participating dogs and the people who love them to better understand and improve the aging experience. I am honored that my peers and colleagues deemed me worthy of this award."

"Dr. Creevy has fundamentally reshaped how the veterinary profession understands aging in dogs," said Dr. Michael Q. Bailey, president of the AVMA. "By building one of the largest and most ambitious canine research efforts ever undertaken, and making its data freely available to scientists everywhere, she has created a lasting resource that will benefit dogs, their owners and human health for generations to come."

A board-certified specialist in small animal internal medicine, Dr. Creevy has devoted her career to understanding canine longevity, mortality and age-related disease. She is best known as a scientific founder, executive committee member and chief veterinary officer of the Dog Aging Project, the largest and most ambitious longitudinal study of aging in companion dogs ever conducted.

Launched as an open-science consortium, the Dog Aging Project follows tens of thousands of privately owned dogs across the United States to identify the genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors that shape healthy aging. The project has enrolled more than 50,000 dogs to date, and its ongoing recruitment and retention activities are supported by multiyear funding from the National Institute on Aging and more than $4 million in philanthropic donations. As chief veterinary officer, Dr. Creevy established the veterinary protocols, quality controls and national infrastructure that made the study possible.

Dr. Creevy is first author of the landmark 2022 Nature article that introduced the Dog Aging Project to the global scientific community, one of more than 80 peer-reviewed papers published by the consortium. True to the project's open-science mission, its curated, de-identified data is made freely available to the research community and has already fulfilled more than 300 access requests from researchers worldwide-multiplying the impact of every dog enrolled.

Her work extends from description to intervention. As principal investigator of the Test of Rapamycin in Aging Dogs (TRIAD)-a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trial-Dr. Creevy is studying whether low-dose rapamycin can extend healthy lifespan in dogs. The effort reflects her broader commitment to One Health, establishing the companion dog as a powerful model for translational geroscience with direct relevance to human aging.

Dr. Creevy has consistently translated discovery into everyday practice. She served as lead author of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) Canine Life Stage Guidelines, now a foundational reference for life stage-based preventive care in general practice. A dedicated educator and mentor, she has guided countless students, interns, residents and early-career faculty throughout her career.

Her research has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Zoetis Award for Veterinary Research Excellence (2022), Texas A&M University's Outstanding Research Leader Award (2021) and Presidential Impact Fellowship (2021), and the Texas Veterinary Medical Association Faculty Achievement Award for Research (2018).

To learn more about the AVMA Career Achievement in Canine Research Award and past recipients, visit https://www.avma.org/awards.

For more information, contact Michael San Filippo, senior media relations manager, at 847-732-6194 (cell/text) or [email protected].