Whether you’re going spelunking or on a religious pilgrimage, a pre-travel consultation may help keep you healthy abroad.

Nearly a quarter of US residents have had a medical issue while abroad, and the issue is prevalent enough that it can influence where travelers choose their vacation destinations. However, many patients and healthcare providers are unaware that travel medicine specialists—like those at HealthPartners in Minnesota—can give destination-specific vaccinations that may be harder to find elsewhere. Those medical professionals can also advise on medical entry requirements.

“We ask people where they’re going, the specific timing of the travel—like, how long is it going to be—what they’re going to be doing while they’re there. So assessing their risks and having discussions with them about their degree of concern for certain infectious diseases that we may choose to vaccinate or not against,” Malini DeSilva, a research investigator and travel and tropical medicine physician at HealthPartners, told Healthcare Brew.

Travel medicine—a discipline that brings together public health, tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, and even occupational medicine—requires primary care or infectious disease doctors to undergo additional training and certification through organizations such as the International Society of Travel Medicine or the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

With that additional training, travel medicine specialists can review a patient’s medical history and determine what specific health risks they may encounter while abroad. For example, immunocompromised travelers, who make up 1%–2% of all patients at US travel medicine clinics per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, may need to develop a customized plan in case of illness. That might include taking extra precautions regarding food and water depending on their destination.

Keep reading here.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

What unites clinicians and patients alike, no matter which area of healthcare they’re in? Dedication to better health + the desire for a more human experience.

To dive more deeply into this perspective, GE HealthCare launched an industry study amplifying the POVs of 7.5k clinicians and patients across 8 countries to better understand what their vision for the future of healthcare could look like. That’s a lotta data.

And with it all, GEHC was able to uncover key barriers that need to be overcome to get there.

Here’s a sneak peek: Patient priorities for the future include faster detection, flexibility, and accessible data, and 61% of clinicians believe AI can support clinical decision-making.

See what else was reported—and how healthcare systems can up their resiliency.

For busy healthcare professionals wanting to take a break and read something other than an electronic health record, Healthcare Brew has some recommendations—whether you’re looking to expand your medical knowledge or take your mind off work. And if you need another excuse to relax, reading books may lead to a longer life, researchers from a 2016 Yale School of Public Health study found.

“A 20% reduction in mortality was observed for those who read books, compared to those who did not read books,” the researchers wrote in the study. “[This finding] indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage.”

Here are some reads to get started.

Demystifying fertility: Healthcare investor and advisor Leslie Schrock’s new book Fertility Rules dives into all things fertility from different gender perspectives. It’s a guide and resource for not only patients but also providers. She hopes that medical professionals can learn something new about reproductive health from her book, Schrock previously told Healthcare Brew.

A history of cancer: Medical oncologist Omar Atiq recommends the book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which details doctors’ attempts to treat the disease throughout history. Author Siddhartha Mukherjee started working on the book during his training in cancer medicine at the Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2003 as a way to not drown in all the information he was learning, the New York Times reported.

“The book takes you through human history in an attempt to understand the disease and shine a light on the resilience of those who have affected its course,” Atiq told the American Medical Association.

Keep reading here.—KW

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Pickleball injuries cost patients in the US nearly $400 million so far this year. (Forbes)

Quote: “I felt really sad and abandoned. This was my PCP. I was like, ‘Dude, I thought we were in this together!’”—Olga Lucia Torres, a 52-year-old New Yorker, on her primary care doctor changing his business model and requiring a $10,000 retainer to keep her on as a patient (KFF Health News)

Read: Black patients are less likely to crowdfund for medical debt—and are less successful when they try. (KFF Health News)