Fortune Small Business has an interesting article about dispensing advice and vaccines for world travelers.
While running health services at the University of Baltimore in the early 1990s, Fran Lessans met a law student who was petrified about the prospect of attending her mother-in-law’s funeral in Ghana.
The young woman had visited the country once before but ended up getting sick and spending two weeks in the hospital. For the funeral trip, she’d done her homework and gotten the right shots, Lessans recalls. But no one had counseled her about water purification and what foods to avoid.
In 1994, Lessans founded Passport Health to provide counseling and vaccines for travelers headed overseas. “I noticed that when people got good counseling they stayed healthy, so we spend about an hour with each of our travelers,” says Lessans, 61.
In 1997, she started franchising the company, which has since grown to more than 160 locations nationwide. Franchisees pay a onetime $35,000 franchise fee, as well as 7% of all revenues. Altogether they deliver 30,000 to 40,000 injections a month.
Photo by Passport Health.