For Clinicians | Azithromycin (Z-Pack): Why It Earns a Place in Appropriate Medical Preparation

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For Clinicians | Azithromycin (Z-Pack) 

Why It Earns a Place in Appropriate Medical Preparation

By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, Jase
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

Can’t you just call in a Z-Pack?“

Your patients probably ask for one all the time. They know it works, and almost everyone has taken one at some point in their life.

Today we’re talking about the Z-Pack and why it’s so helpful for appropriate medical preparation across a number of different common conditions. What it’s approved to treat. What it’s actually being used for. And where the line sits between what’s okay for a patient to keep on hand and what still needs to be seen by a doctor.

What is azithromycin, and what does it treat?

Azithromycin is a macrolide antibiotic, FDA-approved for a number of common bacterial infections.¹ Most courses run 3 to 5 days, with one-time single-dose regimens for a few specific indications.

A few things make it useful when access to care is delayed:

  • The course is short. The drug accumulates in tissue and has a prolonged terminal half-life, which clinically supports a short course providing antimicrobial activity beyond the dosing window.²
  • It covers the common community-acquired pathogens behind respiratory infections, skin and soft tissue infections, certain sexually transmitted infections, and traveler’s diarrhea.¹
  • It’s a real option for patients who can’t take penicillin, which is a larger group than most clinicians realize.
  • It’s oral, well-tolerated, and inexpensive.

FDA-approved indications include:¹

  • Acute bacterial sinusitis
  • Acute bacterial exacerbation of chronic bronchitis (mild to moderate)
  • Community-acquired pneumonia (mild severity, suitable for outpatient oral therapy)
  • Pharyngitis and tonsillitis as an alternative to first-line therapy in penicillin-allergic patients
  • Uncomplicated skin and skin structure infections
  • Urethritis and cervicitis due to Chlamydia trachomatis or certain gonococcal infections
  • Genital ulcer disease due to chancroid
  • Acute otitis media in pediatric patients

Guideline-supported uses outside the FDA label:

  • Traveler’s diarrhea, particularly in regions where fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter is common (notably Southeast Asia).³
  • Pertussis treatment and post-exposure prophylaxis.⁴
  • MAC prophylaxis in HIV patients with CD4 <50 not on effective ART, and as part of combination treatment for disseminated MAC.⁵

Why azithromycin is in the JaseCase

We here at Jase provide, ahead of time, the medications patients need for a number of emergencies, and azithromycin is one of our favorites.

When a patient picks up a prescription at their regular pharmacy, the clinical work has already been done: the diagnosis is confirmed, the indication is documented, the dosing is verified, and the pharmacist is two steps from the prescriber if anything looks off. Contingency stocking removes all of those backstops. The protocol, the indication match, the dosing, the dispensing instructions, and the patient education all have to be locked before the bottle goes on the shelf.

Jase is in a unique position to help patients proactively. We prescribe for a select set of emergencies, before they happen, at the same clinical standard a patient would receive in the room. Azithromycin earns its place in the JaseCase against a specific set of criteria for contingency use:

Indication breadth. One molecule covers the common community-acquired infections a patient is most likely to encounter outside business hours: a sinus infection that goes brutal on day three, a respiratory infection that won’t quit, a strep-positive kid who can’t take amoxicillin, a chlamydia exposure that needs treating, traveler’s diarrhea that hits halfway through a trip. Stocking one drug that addresses several presentations is more useful in a kit than stocking five drugs each addressing one.

Fixed, short dosing. A 3 to 5 day course with no titration, no renal dose adjustment in the typical adult, no requirement for serum levels, and no repeat dosing decisions. The course we wrote ends when the package ends.

Penicillin alternative. About 10% of the U.S. population carries a documented penicillin allergy on their chart.⁶ The true IgE-mediated rate is closer to 1%, but the labeled-allergy patients still avoid penicillin-class drugs in real practice because confirming the true rate requires testing most patients haven’t had. Amoxicillin-clavulanate is the other common kit antibiotic, and for roughly one in ten patients it isn’t an option. Azithromycin is.

Familiarity that reduces error. Roughly 10.3 million prescriptions for azithromycin are written every year in the U.S., making it the 64th most-commonly prescribed medication in the country.⁷ The patient has likely taken it. The prescriber writes it from muscle memory. The protocol Jase delivers with the kit slots into a pattern both already know. Familiar drugs are safer drugs in contingency use.

Storage and stability. Tablets, room temperature, multi-year shelf life. The drug stays viable in a kit on a shelf at home or in a glovebox on the road.

This is how we treat all the drugs in our JaseCase. They’re very carefully selected.

Azithromycin at a glance

The view for the indications most likely to come up when a patient reaches for their kit. Doses are adult standard unless noted.

Don’t reach for azithromycin for:

  • Viral upper respiratory infections. Antibiotics don’t help. Symptomatic care.
  • Suspected gonorrhea. CDC now recommends ceftriaxone monotherapy; azithromycin is no longer routinely added.⁸
  • Suspected MRSA skin or soft tissue infections.
  • Anything escalating: high fever, sepsis signs, immunocompromise, hemodynamic instability, or systemic involvement.
  • Bacterial infections where a beta-lactam is first-line and the patient is not actually penicillin-allergic. Use the right tool.

Two cautions worth flagging:

  • QT prolongation. Use caution in patients with known QT prolongation, electrolyte derangements, or concurrent QT-prolonging medications.⁹
  • Macrolide resistance. Pneumococcal macrolide resistance is significant and varies by region. For pneumonia in particular, current resistance patterns matter for empiric choice.

Stewardship is the bar, not the brake

The answer is the clinical work that happens before the bottle ever ships, while the situation is still calm and considered. For contingency stocking, the prescriber isn’t going to see the patient at the moment of use, so the screening has to be stricter on the front end, not looser. We review the patients current medical conditions, medications, and any allergies they may have to determine if the case medications would be safe for them to take. Patients complete an intake and attestations, a licensed prescriber reviews them against those criteria, and the kit ships only when the fit is appropriate. The patient isn’t reaching into the cabinet on instinct. They are reaching for a medication a prescriber already cleared for them, before they ever got sick.


Each medication in the kit ships with an information sheet: basic drug information, common side effects, contraindications, and dosing for common conditions. The sheets aren’t a diagnostic tool. They are reference materials patients can use to follow the prescriber’s plan and bring accurate information into the room if they end up in front of another clinician. Our team can answer clarification questions about how the medications work. We are not the patient’s treating clinician, and the kit is not a substitute for primary care.

Contingency stocking in this category needs to clear a higher stewardship bar than routine office prescribing, not a lower one. The patient is going to be at home, at a campsite, on a cruise ship, in a hotel halfway across the world, somewhere the prescriber can’t see them. That changes the protocol design. It does not relax it.

Who makes these calls

Our team is medical doctors, physician assistants with field experience in disaster medicine and humanitarian response, and pharmacists. The clinical work happens on the front end, so the patient isn’t doing it alone at 11pm.

Kristen Carpenter, PA-C, put it this way when we mapped out the JaseCase formulary:

“When we decided which antibiotics belonged in the JaseCase, azithromycin was an easy choice. It’s a broad-spectrum antibiotic that can treat a number of different bacterial infections. It is fast acting, usually requires shorter treatment courses, compared to other antibiotics, and is a great alternative for people who are allergic to, or cannot get, penicillin, offering a necessary backup in a limited-supply scenario.“

Charting the grey area in public

Contingency stocking for predictable, common emergencies is a real clinical category, and the guidelines haven’t caught up to it yet. Our team is publishing how we make these calls, the criteria we use to add or exclude a drug, and the protocols we deliver with each kit.

If a patient keeps asking and you’d rather not take on the contingency work yourself, you can refer them to us at Jase.com. It’s a clinical handoff, not a product pitch.

Public knowledge gets better when clinicians chart the grey area in public instead of letting the internet do it. The category is going to fill in. The question is who fills it in, and with what standard.

The bottom line

Azithromycin earned its place in the JaseCase on clinical merit: indication breadth, short fixed-course dosing, a real penicillin alternative, familiarity, and shelf stability. The same screen applies to every drug we add. This is not a replacement for primary care. It is the bridge for the moments primary care isn’t there. Trusted medicine, on your patient’s shelf, before the moment they need it.

To learn more, check us out at Jase.com.

Sources

  1. FDA Zithromax (azithromycin) prescribing information. Indications and Usage; Dosage and Administration. DailyMed: https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/fda/fdaDrugXsl.cfm?setid=db52b91e-79f7-4cc1-9564-f2eee8e31c45
  2. FDA Zithromax (azithromycin) prescribing information, Clinical Pharmacology section (pharmacokinetics: tissue distribution and prolonged terminal half-life). Same DailyMed reference as #1.
  3. CDC Yellow Book, Travelers’ Diarrhea chapter. Azithromycin first-line empiric treatment in Southeast Asia and other regions with fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter. https://www.cdc.gov/yellow-book/hcp/preparing-international-travelers/travelers-diarrhea.html
  4. CDC. Pertussis (Whooping Cough): Treatment and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis. https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/hcp/clinical-care/index.html (treatment overview); https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr5414.pdf (MMWR RR-54/14, 2005, for dosing).
  5. NIH/CDC/IDSA. Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Opportunistic Infections in Adults and Adolescents with HIV: Mycobacterium avium Complex. Azithromycin is the preferred agent for primary prophylaxis (CD4 <50 not on effective ART) and a preferred first agent as part of combination treatment for disseminated MAC. https://clinicalinfo.hiv.gov/en/guidelines/hiv-clinical-guidelines-adult-and-adolescent-opportunistic-infections/disseminated
  6. CDC. Evaluation and Diagnosis of Penicillin Allergy for Healthcare Professionals. ~10% of U.S. patients report a penicillin allergy; <1% are truly allergic. https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/clinical-signs/index.html. Supporting: Castells M, Khan DA, Phillips EJ. “Penicillin Allergy.” N Engl J Med 2019;381:2338-2351.
  7. ClinCalc DrugStats Database. Azithromycin: estimated 10,337,595 U.S. prescriptions (2023), ranked #64 among the most-commonly prescribed medications. https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Azithromycin
  8. CDC Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, 2021. Gonococcal infections: ceftriaxone monotherapy (500 mg IM single dose for patients <150 kg). Azithromycin is no longer routinely added to dual therapy. Chlamydial infections: doxycycline 100 mg BID x 7 days is the recommended regimen; azithromycin 1 g single dose is listed as an alternative. https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/gonorrhea-adults.htm and https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/chlamydia.htm
  9. Ray WA, Murray KT, Hall K, Arbogast PG, Stein CM. “Azithromycin and the Risk of Cardiovascular Death.” N Engl J Med 2012;366:1881-1890. FDA Drug Safety Communication, March 2013: azithromycin QT prolongation risk. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-drug-safety-communication-azithromycin-zithromax-or-zmax-and-risk-potentially-fatal-heart. Current Zithromax label includes QT prolongation in Warnings.

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For Clinicians | Natural Disaster Preparedness: The Medical Framework Most Emergency Kits Miss

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For Clinicians | Natural Disaster Preparedness

The Medical Framework Most Emergency Kits Miss

By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, Jase
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

Are families actually prepared for natural disasters?

Most aren’t. Not because they don’t care. Not for lack of being told to prepare. We prescribers haven’t done the proactive work. Families don’t know what they actually need on hand, or what to prepare for medically.

A 72-hour kit and a flashlight aren’t a medical plan. A bandage and a bottle of Tylenol aren’t a medical plan. Prescriptions and medical supplies are the part most checklists skip. We prescribers have to make sure that part is right.

This article is that framework. It pulls together the patient-facing components Jase has been building for years: the 72-hour kit, the family communication plan, and wound care. The clinical layer sits on top of all three.

Most of us had a lecture on disaster medicine. Few of us had to use it.

Pharmacy school, medical school, PA school all covered it. A slide deck, maybe a chapter on triage in a mass-casualty event. Then we moved on. Most of us didn’t think about it again until it was actively happening to a patient, or to us.

That’s the muscle we’re training now, and it has to cover more than the big ones. Two categories matter here.

Natural disasters are usually few and far between for individual families, but of epic proportions when they happen. Evacuation across state lines at 2am because of a wildfire. Pharmacies underwater for a week after a flood. An earthquake that closes the only urgent care in the county. The ER two counties away after a hurricane knocks out the closer ones. These are the ones that make the news. The families who do well didn’t assume the system would be there afterward. They got medically ready before the storm had a name.

Situational disasters are the everyday version. The disaster isn’t the weather. It’s the access gap itself. The patient who lives 90 minutes from urgent care and gets a UTI on a Friday night. The family on a cruise when a kid spikes a fever and the nearest English-speaking pharmacy is closed. The traveler whose refill won’t arrive before the flight. The toddler whose ear infection announces itself at 11pm on a Saturday in a town with no 24-hour pharmacy. These don’t make the news. They happen every week, to most of our patients. They hit the same access gap as the natural disasters. Just smaller.

The framework has to serve both. Our patients don’t have time to wait while we figure it out in the moment. The job is to think proactively. Build the framework once. Have a ready answer for what they need, before they need it.

Patients are already figuring it out on their own. Prepper internet, TikTok dosing advice, online forums, the friend-of-a-friend who knows a guy. When clinicians don’t chart this space, the internet does. The answers patients find range from reasonable to reckless.

What medication readiness actually looks like

Two layers, both clinical. The first keeps the patient’s current regimen intact. The second covers what the disaster predictably brings.

Layer 1: Chronic continuity
Every patient with a chronic medication needs at least a 90-day supply on hand. Insurance vacation overrides and mail-order fills are the standard mechanisms; coverage varies by state and insurer.

The written medication list is the second half. It is the part that gets skipped most often. Keep one page on the patient or in their go-bag. List every medication by name, dose, prescribing physician, and the pharmacy that actually fills it. With that list in hand, a pharmacist who’s never seen them before can help them so much more easily. Without it, the patient is trying to remember their own regimen under stress.

Layer 2: Acute contingency
This layer covers what the disaster predictably causes.

When water and sanitation fail, GI infections spike. When evacuation shelters fill up, skin and wound infections follow.1 UTIs don’t pause for the storm. Respiratory exacerbations get worse in smoke or mold. Pediatric ear infections happen on the same Saturday night they always do. This time, in a town where the 24-hour pharmacy just closed. These are predictable conditions with well-defined treatment paths. They don’t need a new clinical decision in the moment. They need access in the moment.

That means a prescription contingency layer. Antibiotics for the UTI, skin, respiratory, and GI infections disasters predictably cause. Anti-emetic, anti-diarrheal, and oral rehydration for when IV access isn’t on the table. The JaseCase covers this. A clinician prescribes ahead, evaluates the patient’s history, and counsels on appropriate use.

Think of it this way. Telehealth already prescribes for most of these conditions reactively. Layer 2 is the same prescribing, moved earlier in the timeline. The decision tree is short. The evidence base is solid. The medication ends up with the same patient either way. The only thing that changes is whether they have it when they need it.

What disasters predictably cause, and what to have ready

Different disasters drive different clinical needs. The pattern is consistent enough to build a reference you can carry into the room:

Disaster type Predictable medical needs
Wildfire / smoke event Respiratory exacerbations, eye irrigation, refill disruption
Flood / hurricane GI infections from contaminated water, skin and wound infections, mosquito-borne, mold-triggered respiratory
Earthquake / tornado Traumatic injuries, debris wounds, crush, contamination, local mass-casualty triage
Extended power loss Insulin and refrigerated medications, CPAP and oxygen disruption, heat illness
Extreme heat Heat exhaustion and heatstroke, dehydration, cardiac and respiratory exacerbation, medication temperature instability
Winter storm / extreme cold Hypothermia, frostbite, CO poisoning from indoor heating workarounds, refill and supply disruption

The prescription contingency layer maps cleanly onto this:

  • Skin and wound infections: amoxicillin-clavulanate, doxycycline, clindamycin
  • GI infections from contaminated water: ciprofloxacin, TMP-SMX, metronidazole
  • UTIs (which happen disaster or not): ciprofloxacin, TMP-SMX
  • Broad-spectrum for high-contamination wounds: amoxicillin-clavulanate, doxycycline

The point of the table is not to memorize coverage. It’s a quick reference for what to keep an eye out for, given the disaster type most likely in your area. A clinician in coastal Florida prepares a different list than one in tornado country or wildfire county.

 

Beyond the prescription layer: the survival-medical basics most kits get wrong

Three pieces patients consistently under-pack:

  • Water. A filter that handles both viruses and bacteria, not just bacteria. Most consumer filters miss viruses.2 Add a chlorine or boiling protocol the family has actually practiced.
  • Wound care. Most wounds heal without antibiotics. Clean with tap water and soap. Keep moist with petroleum jelly, not OTC antibiotic ointment.3 Then monitor. Prophylactic antibiotics matter for contaminated wounds, non-potable water exposure, bites, sensitive locations, and patients who are diabetic or immunocompromised.4.
  • OTC. Pain, fever, allergy, anti-emetic, anti-diarrheal, and oral rehydration. The standard kit skews toward pain and antacids. Anti-emetic and oral rehydration are the missing pieces.

The category has a name: appropriate medical preparation. It covers self-limiting, predictable, well-understood conditions. Prescribing ahead is clinically identical to prescribing at the moment.

Charting this grey area in public

Jase’s team includes board-certified family medicine physicians. Our physician assistants have field experience in disaster medicine and humanitarian response. The clinical work happens on the front end. The patient isn’t doing it alone at 11pm in a town where urgent care just closed.

Public knowledge gets better when we chart the grey area in public. Otherwise, the internet does it for us. If you don’t have bandwidth to build a medical readiness plan in the room, you can refer patients to us at Jase.com. We’ll keep sharing frameworks and decision criteria here as we go.

We link three patient-facing guides below. They cover the 72-hour kit, the family communication plan, and wound care. The JaseCase covers the prescription contingency layer for families who want to go further. FirstAid sits alongside it for wounds and injuries. Bunker in a Box handles the longer haul. None of this replaces primary care. It exists for the times primary care isn’t reachable.

Sources

  1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Vibrio Illnesses After Hurricane Katrina, Multiple States, August–September 2005.” MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2005;54(37):928-931. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5437a5.htm
  2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Water Treatment Options When Hiking, Camping, or Traveling.” Drinking Water Prevention guidance, 2025. https://www.cdc.gov/drinking-water/prevention/water-treatment-hiking-camping-traveling.html
  3. Smack DP, Harrington AC, Dunn C, et al. “Infection and Allergy Incidence in Ambulatory Surgery Patients Using White Petrolatum vs Bacitracin Ointment: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” JAMA. 1996;276(12):972-977. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/408314
  4. Stevens DL, Bisno AL, Chambers HF, et al. “Practice Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Skin and Soft Tissue Infections: 2014 Update by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.” Clin Infect Dis. 2014;59(2):e10-e52. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/2/e10/2895845
  5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “What to Do After a Hurricane or Flood: Mosquitoes.” https://www.cdc.gov/mosquitoes/response/index.html
  6. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Use of Carbon Monoxide Alarms to Prevent Poisonings During a Power Outage, North Carolina, December 2002.” MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2004;53(09):189-192. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5309a1.htm

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For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling Three Host Countries, Three Measles Outbreaks By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, JaseEdited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member By the time a patient...

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Measles, Dengue, and the World Cup: The 20-Minute International Travel Checklist We Use Before Every Trip

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Measles, Dengue, and the World Cup: The 20-Minute International Travel Checklist We Use Before Every Trip

By Cayla McGrath
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

For many soccer fans, attending the FIFA World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The 2026 tournament is expected to be the largest in history, with matches spread across the United States, Mexico, and Canada and millions of fans traveling from around the world to be part of it. Flights are booked. Hotels are filling up. Families and friend groups are already planning the international travel trips they’ve dreamed about for years.

At the same time, travel headlines this summer have been filled with news about measles outbreaks, dengue activity, cruise ship illnesses, and evolving CDC travel notices. It can be difficult to know what actually matters, what doesn’t, and whether any of it should change your plans.

Here’s the good news: none of these headlines are a reason to cancel your trip.

They are, however, a reminder that international travel is easier when you spend a few minutes preparing before you leave.

One of the biggest misconceptions about travel health is that it’s mostly about rare diseases in faraway places. In reality, the issues most likely to affect travelers are often much more ordinary: a vaccine you forgot to check, a medication that runs out halfway through a trip, a case of travelers’ diarrhea, a mosquito-borne illness that’s active in the region you’re visiting, or a common infection that becomes surprisingly difficult to treat when you’re navigating an unfamiliar healthcare system.

The good news is that addressing most of those risks doesn’t require hours of research or a complicated medical plan. In fact, the same checklist our team of physicians, physician assistants, and pharmacists uses before international travel can be completed in about 20 minutes.

Here’s what we recommend checking before you go.

Start With the CDC International Travel Notices

Before any international travel, one of the smartest things you can do is spend a few minutes reviewing the CDC’s travel notices for your destination. These notices change regularly and provide updates on outbreaks, disease activity, and health recommendations specific to where you’re traveling. This year, measles and dengue are two of the most notable concerns appearing across multiple destinations.

The CDC has issued a global dengue advisory covering more than 100 countries, and dengue activity remains elevated across many popular travel destinations throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and tropical regions around the world. For most travelers, the takeaway isn’t panic. It’s awareness. Knowing what’s active at your destination helps you make informed decisions before you board the plane.

Verify Your Vaccines Before You Leave

If there’s one item on this year’s checklist that deserves special attention, it’s measles protection. Many adults assume they’re protected because they were vaccinated as children, and most are. However, healthcare professionals are encouraging travelers to verify their vaccination status, especially if records are incomplete or uncertain.

This is particularly relevant for travelers heading to World Cup host cities, where large crowds and international travel create ideal conditions for infectious diseases to spread.

For many people, confirming vaccination status takes just a few minutes through a healthcare provider, patient portal, or immunization record system.

It’s one of the easiest items on the list—and one of the highest impact.

Understand the Difference Between Health Risks and Travel Disruptions

One thing the CDC board doesn’t always capture is the difference between a serious health threat and a trip disruption.

For example, a recent hantavirus outbreak on an Antarctic cruise ship generated significant headlines. While the story was alarming, public health authorities assessed the broader risk as low. Meanwhile, far more travelers will lose vacation days this year to things like travelers’ diarrhea, respiratory viruses, motion sickness, dehydration, or a urinary tract infection than they ever will to a rare infectious disease.

This distinction matters because most travel health preparation should focus on what is likely, not simply what is newsworthy.

A day spent recovering in your hotel room because you couldn’t find treatment for a common illness can derail a trip just as effectively as something much rarer.

Pack for the Problems Most International Travelers Actually Face

When our clinical team prepares for travel, we don’t build a suitcase around worst-case scenarios.We build it around common ones.

A small travel health kit should be able to handle minor injuries, dehydration, motion sickness, blisters, and other everyday issues that frequently arise during travel. Bandages, wound care supplies, electrolyte packets, a thermometer, and basic over-the-counter medications cover a surprising number of situations.

Beyond that, we think about access. What happens if someone develops a UTI on day four of a two-week trip? What if travelers’ diarrhea strikes halfway through a vacation? What if a common infection appears while you’re in a foreign country where prescriptions don’t transfer and healthcare systems operate differently than they do at home?

Those are not rare scenarios. They’re predictable ones.

That’s why our team approaches travel preparedness through the lens of Appropriate Medical Preparation. The goal isn’t to prepare for everything. It’s to prepare for the things most likely to interrupt your trip and create unnecessary stress.

Don’t Assume a Foreign Pharmacy Will Solve the Problem

One of the biggest mistakes travelers make is assuming they’ll simply buy what they need if something comes up. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn’t.

Prescription laws vary dramatically from country to country. Medications may be sold under different names. A prescription from your physician at home may not be valid abroad. Some medications available in the United States face restrictions elsewhere, while medications sold over the counter in another country may differ significantly from what you’re accustomed to using.

By the time many travelers discover these differences, they’re already sick. That’s why our philosophy is simple: if it’s something you know you may need, don’t leave access to chance.

The 20-Minute Pre-Travel Checklist

Before your next international travel, spend 20 minutes working through these four questions:

  1. Have I reviewed the CDC travel notices for my destination?
  2. Is my vaccination status up to date, particularly for measles?
  3. Do I have enough of my routine medications for the entire trip, plus extra time in case of delays?
  4. Do I have a travel health kit that can handle common illnesses and minor medical issues without requiring me to navigate a foreign healthcare system?

If you can answer “yes” to those four questions, you’re ahead of most travelers.

How the Jase Team Travels

At Jase, we spend a lot of time thinking about preparedness because we’ve spent our careers seeing what happens when people don’t have access to what they need.

That doesn’t mean we travel anxiously. Quite the opposite.

The goal of preparation is freedom. When you’ve verified your vaccines, checked destination-specific health notices, packed your medications, and prepared for the most common travel disruptions, you stop worrying about them.

That’s why we don’t view travel preparedness as something separate from travel planning. It’s simply part of traveling well.

The clinicians on our team don’t prepare because they expect something to go wrong. They prepare because they’d rather spend their trip enjoying the destination than trying to find a pharmacy, clinic, or prescription in a city they’ve never visited before.

And that’s exactly what we want for you, too.

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For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

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For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling Three Host Countries, Three Measles Outbreaks By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, JaseEdited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member By the time a patient...

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Can You Get Prescription Medication While Traveling Internationally?

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Can You Get Prescription Medication While Traveling Internationally?

By Cayla McGrath
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

You’re four days into a trip to Florence when the familiar symptoms start.

You’ve had a urinary tract infection before, so you know exactly what’s happening. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be a major problem. You’d call your doctor, visit urgent care, or pick up the prescription you’ve used before. Instead, you’re sitting in a hotel room halfway around the world trying to figure out how healthcare works in a country where you don’t speak the language, don’t know the system, and aren’t even sure whether the pharmacy down the street can help.

It’s not the sort of problem most travelers spend much time thinking about before they leave home.

Most of us assume that if we get sick while traveling internationally, we’ll simply figure it out when we get there. After all, pharmacies exist everywhere. Doctors exist everywhere. Surely there must be a way to get what you need if something comes up.

Sometimes there is.

Often it’s much more complicated than people expect.

Prescriptions Don’t Travel Easily

One of the biggest surprises for American travelers is that prescriptions don’t travel as easily as they do. A prescription written by your doctor in the United States generally cannot be filled by a pharmacist in Italy, Japan, France, Canada, or most other countries. Prescribing authority is local. If you need a prescription medication abroad, you’ll often need to see a locally licensed physician and obtain a new prescription that complies with that country’s regulations.

Even when medications are available, the experience can be frustrating. Drug names differ from country to country. Medications you’re familiar with may be sold under completely different names, formulations, or packaging. Some medications that are routine in the United States are restricted elsewhere. Certain ADHD medications, decongestants, and controlled substances face significant restrictions in countries such as Japan, while other destinations require documentation that must be arranged before departure.

For travelers managing chronic conditions, the challenge can be even greater. Running low on a blood pressure medication, thyroid medication, or antidepressant halfway through an extended trip isn’t simply inconvenient. It can require navigating a healthcare system you never planned on using, often while trying to enjoy a vacation, attend a business trip, or visit family abroad.

Medication Access

What catches many people off guard is that the difficulty isn’t usually the illness itself. It’s access.

A recurring UTI is still a recurring UTI whether you’re in Ohio or Florence. Travelers’ diarrhea is still travelers’ diarrhea whether you’re in Cancún or Chicago. The medical issue may be straightforward. The challenge is obtaining timely care in an unfamiliar place after the problem has already started.

This is why so many experienced travelers think differently about preparation. The best travel preparation isn’t about expecting disaster. It’s about recognizing that certain situations are predictable. Travelers get gastrointestinal illnesses. People with a history of recurrent UTIs sometimes get another one. Prescriptions occasionally run low. Flights get delayed. Trips get extended. The question isn’t whether every traveler will encounter one of these problems. The question is whether you’ll have a plan if you do.

Plan Ahead

At Jase, we believe that plan should begin before departure.

Our team of physicians, physician assistants, and pharmacists created Jase because we repeatedly saw patients trying to solve predictable healthcare problems at the least convenient possible moment. The traveler with a UTI on day four of a two-week vacation. The retiree who realizes they packed thirty days of medication for a thirty-five-day trip. The family trying to find an English-speaking doctor in a foreign city for something that could have been anticipated weeks earlier.

Those experiences don’t usually become medical emergencies. They become unnecessary disruptions.

That’s why we approach travel preparedness differently. Rather than asking people to navigate unfamiliar healthcare systems after they become sick, we focus on helping them prepare before they leave. A licensed U.S. clinician evaluates whether preparedness medications are appropriate for a person’s medical history and travel plans. If they are, those medications are dispensed through a licensed U.S. pharmacy and accompanied by clear guidance for when and how they should be used.

This isn’t a replacement for primary care. In fact, it’s built on the same philosophy that drives good primary care: thoughtful planning, risk reduction, and helping patients stay ahead of problems rather than reacting to them. Your physician remains your physician. Jase simply helps fill the gap that exists when you’re thousands of miles away and that relationship isn’t immediately accessible.

Many travelers spend hours researching hotels, restaurants, transportation, and attractions before a trip. Few spend even a few minutes thinking about how they would access medical care if they needed it. Yet anyone who has ever spent a day of their vacation sitting in a waiting room or searching for a pharmacy in a foreign city understands how valuable that preparation can be.

We call this Appropriate Medical Preparation.

It’s not about expecting the worst. It’s not about packing a suitcase full of medications “just in case.” It’s about recognizing that access to healthcare becomes more complicated when you leave home and taking reasonable steps to prepare for that reality.

Because the goal of your trip should be enjoying Florence, Tokyo, Cancún, or wherever your travels take you—not spending half a day trying to figure out how to get a prescription filled once you’re already sick.

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For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling Three Host Countries, Three Measles Outbreaks By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, JaseEdited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member By the time a patient...

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For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

couple looking at computer asking questions

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

Three Host Countries, Three Measles Outbreaks

By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, Jase
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

By the time a patient is in your exam room asking about MMR before a Mexico City group stage match, or whether the dengue notice applies to their cruise out of Galveston, they’ve already done the easy googling the answer online. The basic question doesn’t require a visit with you.

What lands on your schedule now is the second-layer question. The one they couldn’t find a good answer to online.

Most of us were having a different conversation with travelers five years ago. Pre-travel counseling mostly isn’t reaching a provider at all. Patients are searching, asking AI, scrolling forums, and going. The ones who do bring it to you are bringing the residual question, the one the internet didn’t resolve cleanly. Often it’s a very specific recommendation they want: do I actually need this booster, what should be in the kit, etc. This article is meant to be the clinician-side reference for the summer 2026 version of that conversation.

What’s actually on the CDC board for summer 2026?

The World Cup is the biggest thing happening this summer around the world. Measles is active in all three World Cup host countries. The US has confirmed 1,952 cases as of late May, already approaching the full-year 2025 total of 2,288 with the entire summer ahead.¹ Canada lost its measles elimination status in November 2025 after twelve months of sustained transmission and has reported 907 new cases since the start of 2026.² Mexico’s Jalisco state, home of World Cup host city Guadalajara, has logged 5,282 confirmed cases through mid-April in the country’s worst outbreak in decades.³ Guadalajara isn’t a measles statistic, it’s a place your patients are booking flights to.

The CDC has issued a Level 1 Global Dengue notice covering more than 100 countries, which is an unusually broad advisory.⁴ Locally acquired dengue is also showing up in southern US cities, with multiple confirmed cases in Los Angeles County over the past two transmission seasons.⁵

A novel hantavirus cluster on the MV Hondius expedition ship in the South Atlantic killed three passengers in May, identified as Andes virus.⁶ The WHO assessed the global risk as low. More on the cruise question below.

And the World Cup itself is the largest funnel event in the history of international travel: 48 teams, 16 host cities across the US, Mexico, and Canada, and FIFA’s projected engagement figure of nearly 6 billion people.⁷ You’re thinking: most of them will be watching from a couch. True. But millions will not.

Quick reference: summer 2026 by destination

A pull-up-in-the-room reference for the most common itineraries your patients are flying.

World Cup host countries (US, Canada, Mexico). Active measles transmission in all three. Verify MMR status, especially for adults born after 1957 with uncertain documentation. Patients vaccinated between 1963 and 1968 may have received the inactivated vaccine and should be revaccinated. Check the CDC measles notice before departure.

Caribbean, Latin America, and the southern US. Dengue is elevated in 2026 across Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and locally in southern California and along the Gulf. Counsel EPA-registered repellent (DEET or picaridin), permethrin on clothing, and air-conditioned or screened sleeping. Tell patients to seek care if a fever spikes within two weeks of return.

Cruise ships. The cruise ship hantavirus story is everywhere this month, and it deserves a one-line answer: your patient’s Caribbean cruise out of Miami is statistically not where this is happening. The MV Hondius cluster was on an Antarctic expedition vessel, geographically remote, and WHO has assessed the global risk as low. The actual cruise ship risk is much more mundane….and much more likely. Norovirus is the leading cause of cruise ship outbreaks, and a separate norovirus event affected hundreds of passengers on a Caribbean cruise this same month. The other reliable ways to lose a cruise day: respiratory virus, traveler’s diarrhea, motion sickness. Counsel aggressive handwashing (alcohol gel works against respiratory viruses but soap and water is what handles norovirus), pack a small kit, and report symptoms early so the cruise medical staff can manage them in the cabin instead of letting them derail the trip.

The 20-minute checklist

Four steps, and it fits inside a short visit.

 

  1. MMR verification. For adults born after 1957, confirm two documented doses or evidence of immunity. Adults born before 1957 are generally considered immune. Patients vaccinated between 1963 and 1968 may have received the inactivated vaccine and should be revaccinated. (Your MA can pull these records in five minutes. It doesn’t need to be your time.)
  2. CDC notices for the specific destination. Send patients to the CDC Travelers’ Health page for their destination. The notices update frequently. The page is at wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices.
  3. Medical prep, not just medications. The kit conversation is broader than prescriptions. The prescription backbone is one piece. The rest is the simple stuff that keeps a small problem from becoming the thing they remember about the trip. A reasonable kit, paperback-sized, fits in a carry-on:
  • Gauze and adhesive bandages in two sizes
  • Antibiotic ointment (Neosporin or equivalent)
  • Blister care: moleskin and hydrocolloid patches
  • Oral rehydration salts or electrolyte packets
  • A digital thermometer
  • OTC motion sickness medication
  • A short course of clinically appropriate prescription medications for predictable conditions like UTI, traveler’s diarrhea, common respiratory infections, and yeast infections. This is what Jase handles, prescribed and packaged ahead of the trip.

The kit exists so your patient doesn’t end up standing in a foreign pharmacy at 9pm with a phone translator trying to figure out which Spanish word means antiseptic.

4. What’s available at a foreign pharmacy, and what isn’t. Pharmacy availability varies more than patients expect. Some countries dispense antibiotics over the counter. Others require a domestic prescription that a US script won’t satisfy. Brand names you trust at home may carry different active ingredients abroad, or different doses. View our recent article on Prescription Medication Abroad.

The OTC trap when you’re abroad

This sounds boring and obvious, but is the highest-leverage thing a clinician can teach a traveling patient.

 

Over-the-counter in another country does not mean equivalent to over-the-counter at home. Acetaminophen is sold as paracetamol in most of the world; dosing is usually the same, but the name swap leads to accidental double-dosing when patients also take a combination cold medication that contains the same active ingredient. Ibuprofen is available widely, but the dose per tablet varies. Antihistamines sold under familiar US brand names abroad sometimes contain different active ingredients, including older sedating compounds that can interact with travel sedatives or alcohol. Counterfeit medication is a real concern in some regions and includes products with the wrong dose, the wrong drug, or no active ingredient at all.

 

The rule we counsel: bring what you already use, in the dose you already use. Foreign pharmacies are useful for things you didn’t anticipate, not for things you could have packed.

When the call comes from abroad

Your patient is on day four of a Caribbean cruise with a UTI that started in Cozumel. Or she’s in Florence with a sinus infection she’s been ignoring since Rome. Or he’s on a two-month sabbatical and the antifungal he meant to refill before he left got missed. The portal message comes in. The voicemail comes in. The text from the family member who has your cell. The expectation is that you’ll fix it from your desk.

You can’t.

As Kristen put it to me when we were drafting this together: “I can’t send a script to Europe.”

That’s the first wall. There is no mechanism for routing US prescriptions to foreign pharmacies. And even within the US, looking up an out-of-state pharmacy in eScript takes a while. It’s doable; just a pain that takes up precious time between patients.

The second wall is bigger: anticipating everything that could come up across a two-week trip. The sinus infection that builds on the flight. The GI bug that hits day three. The skin issue from the cruise pool. The allergic reaction to something at a night market. Half a dozen potential prescriptions across as many therapeutic categories, for conditions that may or may not actually present. That work is complex, isn’t part of your fast clinical workflow, and takes hours, not minutes, per patient. Unless you’ve got a really standardized protocol covering all the categories, it’s just easier to refer. It can be done. It probably just doesn’t feel worth your time.

The known versus the unknown is the real divide here. Writing one or two prophylactic scripts for a patient with a recurring issue you already know about (the UTI history, the predictable cold sore) is something most providers can do confidently. The indication is clear, the duration is short, the patient self-identifies. Anticipating everything that might come up on a trip is hard. It should be hard, because it’s very complex.

Appropriate medical preparation

This is the category Jase is building, and pre-travel readiness is one of its clearest applications. Appropriate medical preparation means a short list of well-defined, common, predictable conditions handled clinically before the patient is sick, by people who know what they’re doing, so the patient has what they need before they need it.

It is in no way a replacement for primary care. Complex diagnoses, chronic conditions, ongoing provider relationships belong in your exam room. We work in the contingency space: the UTI on day four of the trip, the traveler’s diarrhea on day six, the strep that announces itself the night before a flight home. The conditions where the clinical decision is predictable and the only failing variable is access.

This is a call to prepare appropriately, not exhaustively.

Who’s doing this work

Jase is a family company of medical doctors, physician assistants, and pharmacists, five years in, with the credentials breadth (board-certified family medicine, disaster medicine, multi-state pharmacy) to make the clinical work defensible.

Charting the grey area in public

Pre-travel counseling is a capacity problem in most primary care practices. The visit is short, the destinations are varied, the CDC board changes faster than most providers can track. If your patients are asking and you don’t have the time to walk them through it, you can refer them to us at Jase.com. We handle the prescription work, the kit, and the patient education ahead of the trip, and we send them back to you with documentation.

We’re going to keep publishing the framework as we use it. The clinical decision trees, the destination-specific notes, the cases where the call is harder than it looks. Public knowledge gets better when clinicians chart the grey area in public instead of letting the internet do it.

The bottom line

Summer travel is supposed to be exciting. It is not supposed to be anxious.

A verified MMR, a short conversation about the destination’s CDC notice, and a small kit on the shelf will handle the vast majority of what makes a trip go sideways. Most of it is fixable in advance, and the fixing happens in your office or ours, not in a foreign emergency room at 11pm.

If your patient is heading to a host city this summer, send them out the door prepared. If you’d rather refer them, send them to us. Either way, the goal is the same: a trip they remember for the right reasons.

Sources

  1. CDC, “Measles Cases and Outbreaks,” data as of May 21, 2026: 1,952 confirmed cases in the US year to date. cdc.gov/measles/data-research
  2. Gavi VaccinesWork and PAHO: Canada lost measles elimination status November 10, 2025, after sustained transmission. CIDRAP reporting on 907 cases since January 2026.
  3. ABC News, US News, Mexico News Daily reporting on the Jalisco outbreak: 5,282 confirmed cases through April 10, 2026, in Mexico’s worst outbreak in decades.
  4. CDC Travel Health Notices, Global Dengue Level 1: wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/level1/dengue-global
  5. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health; CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases, May 2026, on autochthonous dengue transmission in southern California.
  6. WHO Disease Outbreak News, May 2026; CDC HAN 00528: MV Hondius hantavirus cluster, Andes virus, 7 cases including 3 deaths.
  7. FIFA and TheWorldData on the 2026 World Cup: 48 teams, 16 host cities across the US, Mexico, and Canada; FIFA’s projected engagement figure of approximately 6 billion.

Lifesaving Solutions

Everyone should be empowered to care for themselves and their loved ones during the unexpected. Check out our recent lifesaving products today.

Learn More

Recent Posts

Keeping you informed and safe.

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling

For Clinicians | World Cup 2026 Pre-Travel Counseling Three Host Countries, Three Measles Outbreaks By Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD — Director of Clinical Strategy, JaseEdited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member By the time a patient...

read more
View Other Blog Posts

Join Our Newsletter

Our mission is to help you be more medically prepared. Join our newsletter and follow us on social media for health and safety tips each week!