UAMS Clinic in Conway Offers Vaccinations for Overseas Travelers

By David Robinson

The UAMS Satellite Travel Clinic is held at the UCA Student Health Building from 1 – 4 p.m. on the third Friday of each month, with the next clinic to be held Nov. 20. Appointments are scheduled through UAMS’ main clinic at (501) 686-6565.

The satellite clinic is part of the UAMS Travel Medicine Clinic, which is operated by the UAMS Family Medical Center. It provides vaccines for a range of diseases, including yellow fever, which many countries require. The carefully controlled live vaccine can’t be given without special certification from the state Health Department

UAMS’ Cynthia Howington, an advanced practice nurse who leads the travel clinic, said she noticed that many of her patients were from the Conway area. That led her to contact UCA’s Student Health Clinic, where her counterpart, Christie McCrory, also an advanced practice nurse, enthusiastically endorsed the idea.

“Conway is a university center, and there are a lot of traveling students and faculty from UCA, Hendrix College and the other institutions there,” said Howington, who conducts the satellite clinic. “We knew this would be something that would serve the community well, and UCA has been incredibly supportive in this effort.”

In addition, Howington said, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emphasizes the importance of vaccinations for the traveling public and has encouraged efforts to increase the percentage of travelers who get vaccinations.

Howington said there are 29 clinics in Arkansas that provide the yellow fever vaccine, but until now there were none in Conway and the surrounding area, particular to the north and west.

In addition to yellow fever, the clinic offers vaccinations for typhoid, hepatitis A and B, influenza, polio, pertussis/tetanus, MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), meningitis, Japanese encephalitis and rabies.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a new 540,000-square-foot hospital, six centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has 2,775 students and 748 medical residents. Its centers of excellence include the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including nearly 1,150 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.