Travel medicine

During or after international travel, children can experience certain health issues, including:

• Diarrheal illnesses
• Dermatologic conditions (such as animal and mosquito bites, cutaneous larva migrans and sunburn)
• Illnesses with fever (such as malaria and dengue)
• Respiratory disorders
• Injuries from accidents

Travel medicine is an interdisciplinary specialty concerned with the prevention and management of health problems associated with travel. The focus is primarily on a comprehensive pre-travel assessment to identify age and destination-specific health challenges that need to be addressed before the traveler’s departure.

Our services

Pre-travel services

Our Pediatric Travel Medicine Program provides complete pre-travel medical evaluation, including education about prevention of illness (food and water precautions, mosquito precautions, precautions for altitude sickness). We also provide immunizations to guard against diseases, including:

• Yellow fever (we’re an official Yellow Fever Vaccination Center, authorized by the World Health Organization)
• Japanese encephalitis
• Typhoid
• Hepatitis A
• Rabies
• Meningococcal meningitis
• Tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis

Some immunizations require multiple injections and take weeks to reach full effectiveness, so you should schedule your child's appointment as far in advance of your travel plans as possible. We can also prescribe prophylaxis for malaria, diarrheal diseases and altitude sickness.

Post-travel services

If you're concerned about your child's health after they return from travel, we offer a comprehensive clinical and diagnostic evaluation, including screening tests for illnesses that might have been acquired while abroad.

Our memberships

We're a member of the following organizations:

• Global TravEpiNet Program—A national network of travel clinics across the U.S. that is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is aimed at advancing the health of individuals who travel internationally.
• Heading Home Healthy Program—Offers free resources including web tools that allow you to generate CDC-based recommendations based on your proposed international travel.
• Geosentinel—An international network of travel and tropical medicine clinics, sponsored by CDC and the International Society of Travel Medicine. The network’s focus is on identifying trends in travel-related or migration-related infections; the information helps to effectively counsel travel patients to minimize the likelihood that they develop an infection while traveling internationally.