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Travel medicine, also called travel health care, is a growing field thanks to increased international travel in the past few decades.

Fran Lessans, RN, MSN, stumbled onto a career in travel medicine while working at a college health center 15 years ago. Students who had previously traveled to conventional destinations like Fort Lauderdale, Fla., or even London for spring break began vacationing in more exotic locations.

They came to her for immunizations and returned from the hospitals where she referred them dissatisfied with the treatment they received. It seems the physicians and nurses didn’t know much about the diseases the students might encounter on their trips.

“So I started developing educational materials and before I knew it, I had all kinds of people coming to see me for travel information,” she said.

Today, Lessans, 56, is the owner of Passport Health, a travel medicine business with 50 franchises around the country. She has sold her travel medicine formula to nurses, physicians, hospitals, and entrepreneurs.

Travel medicine, also called travel health care, is a growing field thanks to increased international travel in the past few decades. Corporate executives planning a trip to China, spring breakers vacationing in the South Pacific, and church volunteers involved in relief work in Nicaragua all need immunizations and, more importantly, education to help prevent illnesses.

Bradley Connor, MD, director of the New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine and president of the International Society of Travel Medicine, said the ISTM was founded in 1991 with a few hundred members and now has more than 2,000.

The increased interest in travel medicine is evident by the more than 500 travel medicine clinics now open in the United States, a trend, he said, that is driven by increased business and leisure travel. However, a large number of travelers still don’t take advantage of the services. The ISTM’s website estimates that only 8% of the 600 million travelers across international borders seek pre-travel health advice.

Connor said those who don’t visit a travel medicine clinic either don’t visit a physician at all or visit their family physician, who may not know the health risks common to the region to which the patient is traveling.

Karen Kluge-Ramirez, RN, BSN, who owns a Passport Health franchise in Boca Raton, Fla., worked with Lessans in the company’s corporate office in Baltimore before it became a franchise. Business is booming, she said.

“We’re becoming a smaller world,” Kluge-Ramirez said. “Where we used to travel to Europe, now we’re going to Bali, the jungles of Africa 85 and taking trains from Mongolia into Russia. [Travel medicine is] nice because we’re able to get to them first, research it, and let them know what they’re up against.”

Happy trails

Travel medicine is a growing subspecialty, said Christopher Bajkiewicz, RN, BSN, a travel medicine consultant in Chula Vista, Calif. He’s now in his 10th year of hosting seminars and teaching courses on travel medicine. He works mostly as a consultant for relief and development organizations, churches, and mission agencies that are sending people either on short-term trips or as long-term expatriates to work in another country.

Bajkiewicz said common diseases to which travelers are exposed include yellow fever, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid, diarrhea-related diseases, upper respiratory infections, and tuberculosis.

He said Americans, or almost any traveler to a foreign country, are more susceptible to local diseases than the people who live there because they haven’t built up immunity. He said one reason pre-travel education is so important is that it teaches people to avoid certain foods, to only drink bottled or boiled water, and to adhere to rigid sanitation procedures.

“I enjoy travel more now,” he said. “I feel a lot safer and I think the people I have been able to teach feel a lot safer too.”