Welcome to New Board Members

The membership elected two new counselors to the ISTM Executive Board, Ron Behrens, United Kingdom, and Nancy Jenks, United States. Both have long and distinguished careers in travel medicine and related fields.

Ron Behren's path to be an ISTM counselor started at birth. He was born, brought up, and schooled in Zambia and Zimbabwe (then Northern & Southern Rhodesia). At an early age he developed an interest in natural history - an interest which is still with him today - and helped found the Zambian Ornithological Society.

He received his undergraduate medical training at the University of Zambia in Lusaka and trained in hospitals around that country, in the years before the HIV epidemic. After qualifying in Zambia, he had varied medical experiences, finally ending up training in gastroenterology and tropical nutrition at the Dunn Nutrition unit at Cambridge University. While there, he undertook a research scholarship which took him back to Africa, this time to Gambia. Additional research activity has included clinical studies in Bangladesh, Tanzania and Indonesia.

In the UK and throughout Europe, Ron has contributed substantially to public health and to furthering travel medicine. He helped create and is on the steering committee of the National Travel Health Centre and Network, based at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, London, and is on the steering group of TropNetEurop where he is active in their disease surveillance and in policy development. He is the director of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases Travel Clinic, a post he has held for the past 15 years and, since 1985, has been a senior Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students.

In the ISTM, Ron has been chairman of the educational and training committee from 1993-1995, has sat on the editorial board of the Journal of Travel Medicine (JTM) where he has been a reviewer since its creation, has served on the scientific committee of most of the large ISTM meetings, and has presented scientific papers at all meetings since 1993.

Ron's research in travel medicine has been aimed at improving the implementation of advice and reducing the morbidity of non-vaccine related diseases. He has published extensively on health economics and the willingness of travelers to pay for services, traveler's behavior and their knowledge of health issues. Recently he has focused on the travel-related problems of ethnic travelers and VFRs (travelers visiting friends and relatives.) He has contributed more than 10 original publications to the JTM.

As far as his thoughts about ISTM: "I feel that our Society needs to focus on ensuring that the practice of travel medicine is evidence based, especially in areas of advice (to individuals and policy makers) and behavior change . We need to encourage research funding in this area, as benefits to travelers are likely to be significant. I feel that there is a bias to research on topics where sponsorship and funding are accessible but not necessary priority health issues. There are many unchallenged assumptions and practices we undertake daily without supporting evidence. The scientific basis of the practice of travel medicine is still in its infancy and dealing with uncertainty in our practice needs further attention. I strongly feel that we should be more questioning to what we do in every day practice and look to ways to improve. I would like to carry this philosophy onto the executive board of the Society. I have personal views on commercial independence, transparency of interests through proper disclosure and improving individual and corporate accountability to the ISTM membership."

Nancy Jenks is a board certified family nurse practitioner (FNP) who has worked in the field of travel medicine for 20 years, has spent time on four continents, holding travel medicine-related positions in the USA, Nepal and Belgium. Currently she is the director of immigrant and travel health at the Hudson River Community Health Center in Peekskill, New York, a semi-rural area north of New York City.

After graduating from university with a major in French literature, Nancy served for 3 years as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. Back in the United States she completed two years of a pre-med curriculum and then returned to graduate school for a master's degree in science and FNP training. In 1983 she joined a family practice in a medically under-served area of New York City, and also served as a faculty member at the Institute of Urban Health residency program to train FNPs and family physicians. In 1986, she moved to Kathmandu, Nepal where she worked for two years with David Shlim at the CIWEC Clinic, a major health facility serving the expatriate and tourist communities.

After returning from Nepal, Nancy co-founded and served as the president of a nurse practitioner-run travel medicine practice in Westchester, New York and continued family practice at a community health center. In the mid-1990's, she moved to Belgium where she worked for two years with Pierre Van Damme at the University of Antwerp's Center for the Evaluation of Vaccination. In 1997 she returned to her practice at the community health center in the Hudson Valley, where her practice includes the care of new migrants, mostly from South America.

In 2001, Nancy became the first nursing professional to be appointed as a full site director of GeoSentinel. She is co-author of several publications in the peer-reviewed indexed literature and is the first author on a review on hepatitis E in travelers, published in the Journal of Travel Medicine. With her Belgian colleagues, she co-authored a chapter in the Steffen/DuPont Textbook of Travel Medicine. Her upcoming JTM publication focuses on the risk of Lyme disease in the migrant population in New York.

Nancy's husband, Bruce Jenks, is an Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations Development Program. They have two teenage boys: Andrew is studying film at New York University and Matthew is a sophomore in high school. Nancy's many outside interests include oil painting, sailing and classical guitar.

"During my term as ISTM counselor I intend to work to further the development of educational and training opportunities in travel medicine and make these opportunities easily accessible to our members," says Nancy. "These initiatives will support the organization's goal of adopting evidence-based guidelines for consensus opinions in travel medicine. I am very enthusiastic about the contributions of nurses in this pursuit.

"I also believe that ISTM should significantly support our members who are working with the VFR (visiting friends and relatives) and migrant communities. It is essential that we as an organization focus on these populations as they grow in number and importance.

"I strongly support the Practice and Nursing Issues Committee in incorporating many new and exciting initiatives into ISTM's strategic planning. These initiatives include promoting national and international networking among ISTM nurses and support of nursing research."