Travel and Tropical Medicine

The Yale School of Medicine Section of Infectious Diseases is home to faculty with extended training and extensive clinical experience working in tropical and travel medicine. Patients seeking pre-travel consultation and those with infectious diseases after exposures in the international travel can seek clinical care and counseling at the Yale Travel and Tropical Medicine Clinic.

1. Provide expert consultation and comprehensive clinical services to both individuals seeking pre-travel advice and medical services with an emphasis on prevention of infectious diseases, and to returning travelers and other individuals with infections as a result of international travel.
2. Foster an environment and network for trainees that supports clinical learning and other educational opportunities focused on travel and tropical medicine.
3. Support ongoing in-depth engagement of our faculty in basic, translational and clinical research and collaborative international endeavors directed towards addressing tropical medicine and other neglected infections.

Our comprehensive pre-travel consultations guide adult and children travelling outside of the continental United States to ensure safe travel. We work with individuals to anticipate potential exposures and identify potential infections that can be prevented. Individuals may be traveling to visit friends and relatives (VFRs), for work or education, or for vacation. Each visit is tailored to the individual based on their destination, itinerary, length of stay, access to health care while travelling, and their medical history. In addition to providing routine travel-related medical care (including vaccine administration, malaria or other infection prophylaxis, recommendations regarding exposure precautions, and discussion of standby emergency treatment (SBET), etc.), we also provide counseling on non-infectious high-risk activities, such as high-altitude exposure, scuba diving and any violence concerns raised by the U.S. State Department. Self-referral is accepted.

We also provide comprehensive evaluation and treatment for returning travelers with fevers, atypical bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic diseases, particularly those conditions that disproportionately occur in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

The faculty involved in our travel and tropical medicine clinic are also heavily engaged in conducting research, including in vectorborne and zoonotic diseases, microbial pathogenesis, and global health. Our research brings us to all corners of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, Peru, Honduras, and Brazil, to work in partnership with local collaborating researchers and institutions. Research efforts are funded by diverse funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and private non-profit funding agencies. See individual faculty profiles to learn more about the ongoing research programs.

We are joining the Global TravEpiNet (GTEN), a network of travel clinics across the United States aimed at improving the health of those who travel internationally and is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Our educational mission is to train the upcoming generation of physicians (medical students, residents, fellows) and clinical providers interested in subspeciality expertise in travel and tropical medicine. Experiences in our clinic can be complemented with global health electives provided through Yale. We support and mentor interested trainees in obtaining their Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers' Health provided by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.