General Description and Overview

Travel health is a profitable way to grow your immunization program and thereby expand your portfolio of pharmacy services. Having a travel health program can easily build reach within the pharmacy and is a tool to provide more opportunities for marketing. Pharmacists can offer services both before and after the patient’s travels to ensure quality of care and to achieve maximum opportunities to make medication recommendations. Payment in the form of consultation fees can be incorporated with fees for vaccine administration.

Offering travel immunizations can also be an excellent segway into introducing the importance of vaccines to patients and increase receptivity to receiving other vaccines for which pharmacists could bill. Therefore, it is highly recommended that vaccinations be part of the travel health program. Many pharmacies have travel health clinics, expanding their scope of practice and presence in the community.

Marketing a travel vaccine service is extremely important. Physicians, local and state health departments, churches, and travel agencies can all be excellent sources of referral.

Getting Started

• Implementation Guide (CE)
• Program Forms
  • Patient Consent Form
  • Medical History Form
  • Prescription Authorization Form
  • Travel Action Plan
  • Travel Vaccine Handouts
  • Collaborative Practice Agreements (State Specific), Protocols, Standing Orders

Certifications and Training

• APhA's Advanced Competency Training Program
• Yellow Fever Certification Course
• CPR
• State required certifications

Presentation

Immunization Beyond Flu
Justin Wilson, PharmD

• Presentation

Resources

• CDC Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit
• CDC Pink Book
• WHO Website
• Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Recommendations
• Software
  • Travax
  • Tropimed
  • Travel Care
  • RoverTravelScript Ltd
• IDSA Guidelines on The Practice of Travel Health
• CDC list of Travel Health Kit Essentials
• International Society of Travel Medicine
• U.S. Embassies
• CDC on Travel Health

Tips

• Sample Workflow & Breakdown

Questions?

Contact: John Beckner, Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives
[email protected]
(703) 838-2649 or the resources below.

• See IAC's Ask the Experts

   

  • Email IAC: [email protected]
• CDC info 800-232-4636
  • Email CDC: [email protected]
• Immunization program manager contacts by state
• 800-INFO-FDA
  • Email FDA: [email protected]