Protecting Travelers’ Health

In the past decade, global travel has grown dramatically. Any traveler—human, animal, or pathogen—can cross the globe in less than 24 hours. Recent health events, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the spread of chikungunya in the Western Hemisphere, have piqued public interest in travelers’ safety and highlighted the importance of accurate, up-to-date travel health information.

CDC Health Information for International Travel (more commonly known as the Yellow Book) is the definitive resource for preventing illness and injury in a globalized world. The book provides the U.S. government’s health recommendations for international travel, including vaccine and drug information, disease maps and country-specific disease information, and detailed precautions for specific types of travelers.

The Yellow Book is published biennially through a partnership between CDC’s Travelers’ Health Branch, the CDC Foundation, and Oxford University Press. Travelers’ Health coordinates a comprehensive update to the book’s content for each new edition. By working with hundreds of travel medicine experts, CDC provides the latest recommendations to protect the health of international travelers. Oxford provides technical expertise in layout, design, and marketing of the book. Oxford then publishes a hard copy version of the Yellow Book for sale, and CDC updates the free online version of the book. The Yellow Book is also available as an eBook and an app.

The new 2018 edition of the Yellow Book debuted in May 2017. To order a hard copy of the Yellow Book, visit Oxford University Press. To access an online version, view the Yellow Book table of contents. By partnering with Oxford and CDC Foundation, Travelers’ Health can continue to expand and improve Yellow Book content and provide a high-quality product in a variety of formats.