Exploring the Intersection of Tropical Medicine and Migrant Health

Tropical medicine has typically been concerned with diseases that originate in warm, tropical climates, often associated with resource poor health care environments, and largely neglected by traditional medical training and clinical practice. In the Western concept, tropical disease is often associated with poverty, civil strife and migration. As health care practice, and the populations we serve become exponentially more global, health care practitioners are working with migrant populations in the United States and seeing the Northern end of a transmissions route that originates in many different countries and environments. The question of how to provide appropriate diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these diseases is becoming more and more critical for the U.S. based health care community. In many ways, what were once considered tropical diseases have now become among the neglected disease of poverty here in the United States.

This webinar will address the broader issues of tropical disease in the migration stream. Dr. Hoverman will address sources for recognition, therapy, and prevention and prevent for some of neglected diseases of poverty along the migrant stream including Dengue Fever, Chagas Disease, Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, and Hansen's disease. The presentation will include a discussion of how specific cases to highlight some of the ways in which clinics can begin to address global health issues at the local level as well as seek further collaboration and resources from expert networks and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.