Insights

By Natasha Soulé, Global Safety Manager, The Pennsylvania State University, and Gary Langsdale, University Risk Officer, The Pennsylvania State University, and URMIA Past President.

The US Department of State recently changed the way it issues international travel advisories to be more responsive to the dynamic international environment we face today. Because of the more detailed and continuously updated information available on the State Department’s new advisory system, schools may wish to review and adapt the process by which they define their risk tolerance.

What’s new

Instead of having a travel warning list for about 40 countries, the State Department has assigned one of four travel advisory levels to more than 200 countries, with further advisories within the country at a region or city level for elevated risk due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest and so on. For example, the country of Panama may have a level 1 advisory but have the equivalent of a level 4 (Do not travel) advisory for the Darién region due to crime. The new advisories also reference elevated risk levels for short-term events, such as hurricane recovery.

Beyond these new travel advisories, the State Department also issues travel alerts, which are intended to inform US citizens of specific safety and security concerns in a country, such as upcoming demonstrations or severe weather conditions. These are like the safety and security messages on individual US embassy websites, but they are now also available on the State Department’s main country website.

What this means for you

Many institutions have long used the State Department’s former travel warning system – either alone or in tandem with other sources – as a bright line to set restricted country/location lists for travel by their students, faculty and staff. We now have continuously changing travel advisories for a much larger set of countries and more specific information on safety conditions within a country. This is a good thing, but it makes managing the risks of international travel much more complex. For example, one might set a bright line against any travel to a level 4 country, but would you make the same decision about a level 2 country with a level 4 region that is close to, but not the exact, destination of your travelers? These more nuanced details may mean double the work for overtaxed international health and safety professionals – especially those individuals at an institution for whom travel safety is one of multiple responsibilities – who simply may not have the capacity to absorb this extra burden.

Considerations as you adapt

As your institution considers adapting its international travel policies, here are some considerations to help you navigate the process of change.

• What is your institutional risk tolerance for different constituencies? Some schools differentiate their willingness to endorse travel to specific locations according to whether the travelers are undergraduate students, graduate students/assistants, faculty or staff. Some schools differentiate their willingness to endorse travel to specific locations according to purpose, such as travel for field research, conferences or recruiting international students – especially students from under-represented areas.
• Would it help to use an approach that relies on multiple sources of information? Utilizing multiple sources of information helps address the potential for bias coming from one source. In addition to US State Department advice, you could look to other governmental travel advisories in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. If you work with international insurance or security providers, you also might factor in their independent risk ratings. Many of these private companies produce their own numerical ratings.
• How can you manage the reputation of your institution and observance of its guidelines? If you move to greatly increase the number of restricted countries that require people connected to your institution to obtain a travel review, it can lead to the perception that the institution has become much more risk averse. As a result, travelers connected to your institution might take your travel processes less seriously and try to avoid notifying anyone that they are traveling to restricted countries.

We must find a way to adapt our policies smartly. While uncommon, you might have the rare occasion of a request to travel to a specific area with the equivalent of a level 4 rating for any number of reasons or temporary conditions in what is usually considered a low-risk country, which you do want to review. The challenge is finding the best method to catch the travel you want to review, while not wasting time reviewing travel you aren’t concerned about. For many of us, this will be an iterative process to see what works best for our unique conditions, and we will continue to share and learn from one another’s best practices developed over time.