Long gone are the days when people just wanted to sit in a chair and watch the world go by while on vacation. Today’s international travelers increasingly seek adventure and thrills that capture the essence of the place they are visiting. However, with the rise in experiential travel also comes an increase in the risk for injury, illness and infection. Learning how best to protect yourself can help ensure that your adventure will be fantastic from start through finish.

What Is Experiential Travel?

Experiential travel is a vacation taken up a few notches to include experiences that resonate at an emotional or even spiritual level. These sorts of trips are more personalized, more hands-on, more adventurous and more attuned to the local culture of each destination. Some people take part in experiential travel for the purposes of self-discovery while others want to immerse themselves in the unique aspects of what drew them to the destination in the first place.

Health Risks of Experiential Travel

There are several components to experiential travel that can put the health of travelers at risk. These risks include:

• Far-off destinations. An adventure to a rainforest or exotic locale may be far from health care facilities should you develop a sudden illness or become injured during your trip.
  

• Action. Experiential travelers are not content to sit in a chaise at the side of the hotel swimming pool for a week. Rather, they want to get out and do things. Many activities increase the risk of injuries, exposure to mosquitoes carrying parasites, and other infectious diseases spread by animals and insects.
  

• Exposure to endemic diseases. In these out-of-the-way world destinations, the locals may not have been vaccinated against diseases that are rare in North America. As a result, you could become exposed to diseases such as polio, yellow fever and typhoid.
  

• Poor sanitation. You will likely have a difficult time finding filtered or bottled water while skydiving off cliffs in Nepal or exploring the Amazon. There is a risk of food-borne and water-borne diseases.

How to Stay Healthy During Your Adventure

With some preparation and preventative action, you can head out on whatever type of experiential travel adventure you can imagine and still protect your health. About two months before your departure, schedule a pre-travel health exam with a travel health specialist. You will receive any necessary travel vaccinations to reduce your risk of picking up infectious diseases during your trip. Travel health specialists can prescribe preventive medications such as anti-malarial drugs to begin taking before you depart. You will also receive guidance on packing for a healthy trip, such as which sunscreen to take, the best type of mosquito repellant and how to select a water purification kit. You may also want to consider travel health insurance, trip cancellation insurance and medical evacuation insurance in case of an illness or injury during your adventures.

Sources:
National Geographic: 7 Travel Trends You Need to Know Now

In an ongoing study of the efficacy of HPV vaccines at Stiftung Juliusspital in Weurzburg, Germany, researchers examined the antibody levels of girls who received the vaccine at ages 10 through 14, which is the recommended time period for vaccination. The Adjuvanted HPV vaccine is a three-dose series of shots that aims to prevent infection from HPV types 16 and 18, which are responsible for the majority of cases of cervical cancer. Scientists continue follow-up of the cohort to determine how long the vaccine can protect against HPV infections.

What Is the Adjuvanted HPV Vaccine?

The adjuvanted HPV vaccine is bivalent, which means it contains antigens against two types of HPV. To receive the full benefits of HPV vaccination, you need three shots. The second shot comes one month after the first shot, and the third shot comes six months after the first shot. In the U.S. and Canada, a name-brand HPV vaccine is recommended for use in young men and women ages 13 to 26.

Why Is HPV Vaccination Important?

HPV is responsible for causing over 17,000 cancers annually in women and more than 9,000 cancers annually in men. In addition, it’s the cause of a common sexually transmitted infection, genital warts. HPV is passed from person to person through skin-to-skin contact during sexual activities. It can affect the throat, anus, penis, cervix and vagina. There are no screening tests for many of these cancers, some of which are not detected until the disease is severe and no treatments are available. Treatment for genital warts can be uncomfortable, and the condition may be embarrassing. Vaccination against HPV can minimize your risk of these painful, serious and sometimes deadly infections.

Who Is Eligible for HPV Vaccination?

Women aged 13 to 26 and men aged 13 to 21 are eligible for HPV vaccination. It’s important for both young men and young women to be vaccinated because men can spread HPV to women through sexual contact. The vaccine can help lower the risk of cancers in all young adults. The researchers at Stiftung Juliusspital in Germany estimate that HPV vaccination provides detectable protection for at least two decades, which covers the time when young people are becoming sexually active and planning families of their own.

Benefits of HPV Vaccination

The repercussions of cancers caused by HPV in women can lead to the need for radical treatment such as hysterectomy. This surgical procedure renders women infertile. HPV vaccination also prevents cancers in men. Early vaccination against HPV before the onset of sexual activity minimizes the risk of such drastic complications to reproductive and overall health.

How to Get Vaccinated Against HPV

If you’re in the eligible age range for vaccination, it’s not too late to get vaccinated. You can also complete the HPV vaccination series if you’ve only had one or two of the shots. Parents should schedule this vaccine for their sons and daughters to help protect their future health. To schedule your vaccination against HPV, you can contact your physician, pediatrician or a travel health specialist at Passport Health. Travel health specialists can also provide you with other vaccines to help guard against infections during domestic and international trips. You’ll receive guidance for packing, such as what benefits you can get from sunscreen, mosquito repellant, water purification tablets and sunscreen.

Sources:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: HPV and Cancer
Infectious Disease News: Adjuvanted HPV Promoted Long-term Antibody Persistence in Preteen, Adolescent Girls

If you think that you don’t need an on-site flu vaccination program at work, think again! A dedicated immunization effort will have several positive effects on your business. Many people do not end up getting a flu vaccine on their own time since they are unaware of the need to do so, and in turn, they may end up spreading the disease throughout the workplace. This is your chance to engage in public health education with the people who matter the most to your business — your employees. Here are some ways that an on-site flu vaccination program can have a positive effect on your business operations.

Reducing Absenteeism

When workers contract the flu, they tend to lose an average of five working days annually as they try to recover from the illness. However, some people take longer to recover than others, and they may begin to get better as others get sick. Your workplace could be suffering from absenteeism and staffing shortages for a couple of weeks if the flu hits your employees hard. After a while, this could lead to contracts not being upheld and profits being lost. Up to 20 percent of American workers will fall ill with the flu each year, so it makes sense to vaccinate your employees and ensure that they will be present at work during the flu season.

Boosting Employee Morale

When a large portion of a community is ill, productivity tends to suffer. People might stay at home due to their concerns about getting the flu and passing it on to their family members. Your bottom line will begin to suffer as projects fall behind and people avoid the workplace out of a fear of illness. By encouraging employees to get vaccinated at work, you can help them feel safe about coming in to perform their essential tasks. The protection granted by the flu vaccine extends far beyond the workplace, which can calm their fears of spreading the flu to other people. Your company will continue to thrive during the flu season if you set up an on-site vaccination program.

Reducing Travel-Related Illness

Perhaps your employees travel frequently in order to serve the needs of the company. During the height of flu season, they might be traveling through airports or public transit hubs. This could put them at risk of contracting the virus and spreading it back through the workplace, which in turn causes productivity to suffer. By starting an on-site flu vaccination program, you can make sure that anyone who travels for work stays safe and healthy.

On-Site Flu Vaccination Programs: A Key Part of Public Health

If you are interested in starting an influenza vaccination program at your workplace, you should strongly consider using Passport Health’s corporate services. We will assign travel health specialists who can visit your office and administer flu vaccines to employees who need them.

Vaccination is the smart choice for a business that doesn’t want to slow down because of an outbreak of illness. By maintaining a positive public health environment in your office, you can boost productivity and play an active role in the health of your employees. Contact Passport Health today for more information about setting up an account.

Sources
CDC Key Facts Page on Flu Vaccines
NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Guide to Establishing a Work-Site Influenza Program
Passport Health Article on Establishing On-Site Vaccination Programs

The flu is serious business, but this common ailment is commonly misunderstood. Watch this video to dispel 8 of the most prevalent flu myths.

Established Relationships Nurtured During Trip Abroad

Name: Marcus Newton
Lives in: Chandler, AZ, USA
Destination: Balkans
Trip Date: May 28 – June 15, 2014

Founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1956 White House conference on citizen diplomacy, Sister Cities International is a non-profit, non-partisan organization serving as the national membership organization for individual sister cities, counties, and states across the United States. President Eisenhower envisioned an organization that could be a champion for peace and prosperity by fostering bonds between people from different communities around the world. By forming these relationships, President Eisenhower reasoned that people of different cultures could celebrate and appreciate their differences and build partnerships that would lessen the chance of new conflicts. Sister Cities International advances peace and prosperity through cultural, educational, humanitarian, and economic development exchanges. It serves as a hub for institutional knowledge and best practices in the field of citizen diplomacy.

Marcus Newton, owner of Printing Specialists (an Arizona business for over 33 years), has been volunteering for the organization since 1986 and is currently the Vice President for the Sister Cities chapter in Tempe, AZ. He, his wife, and 16 other members of his local chapter recently traveled abroad to attend the Balkan Sister City Conference in Skopje, Macedonia. They also met with many mayors as they toured other Balkan countries in search of additional future Sister City relationships.

Did you visit any other countries in the area? If yes, which countries?
Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina

How did the daily life of the locals differ from the life you live back home?
There was not a noticeable difference among the daily life of the locals from ours. We met many locals and the only difference was language, but we are all faced with similar problems; the only slight difference may be intensity.

Did you eat any local delicacies or interesting foods during your trip?
We had many opportunities to eat the local delicacies and partake in cultural experiences. We were guests at many banquets hosted by various Eastern Europe cities that were often 4-6 course meals that lasted from anywhere of 3-4 hours in length. These lunches/dinners gave us an opportunity to not only converse with the locals, but also taste many of their beloved cuisine, listen and dance to their local music. Almost every day, we ate the local vegetables, meats and drank local beer/wine. In Skopje, we were guests at a local restaurant, in which the owner and chef personalized our menu after the local favorites. He cooked all of our food in a specialized wood oven. This specialized oven was the only equipment in his kitchen. The dishes he created were amazing! While we were in Albania, we did have a fish that only can be found in the great depths of Lake Ohrid of the Balkans. The locals informed us that the Queen of England is known to favor this fish and it is imported from the lake to her table.

How was the weather different than in Arizona? Was it challenging to acclimate?
The weather was absolutely wonderful. The only difference was the high humidity that we are not used to in Arizona. The sun shined every day and the waterway breezes cooled us off. When it was hot, many of our new local friends would help us find an area of “shadow” (that is what they referred to as shade) and joined us for a drink at many of the beautiful cafés.

What was the most memorable experience during your trip?
The beautiful scenery, but most of all the opportunity to meet many new friends.

Did you find any cultural similarities between your destination and home?
Throughout our travels, we have learned that people are very similar no matter where they live. We all have the same problems (family, work, government and etc…). We have all loved, felt pain and laughed.

What was the most surprising thing about your trip?
The most surprising thing about our trip was the beauty of Serbia. Serbia was so clean, green, and blooming with flowers. It was amazing to see how the wine industry has flourished in the Balkan countries. We saw so many miles of vineyards along the Balkan coastline and countryside. We tasted many of the local wines and they were incredible. It was evident that the Balkans are serious about their wine.

What places of interest or activities do you recommend?
Everyone must visit Istanbul, Turkey. It is an intensely beautiful country that is so rich with history. The restaurant, hotel and tourism service is outstanding.

How did your trip impact the way you view life abroad??
That communism was a huge failure and still presents many obstacles for many countries to overcome.

Will you be traveling abroad soon? Be sure you are healthy and fully prepared for your trip by scheduling a visit with a travel health specialist before you go.

Sister Cities International
Tempe Sister Cities Chapter
Passport Health blog- Doing Good Globally: Sister Cities International