Book excerpt: While serving as a physician overseas in resource-poor countries, Dr. James Chambers recognized the need for a practical, portable reference for non-specialist healthcare providers to orient them to common issues when serving in new situations, whether due to geography, austere environments, or complex humanitarian disasters. Field Guide to Global Health and Disaster Medicine draws on the experience, training, and perspectives of committed healthcare providers from diverse nations and backgrounds to provide the most essential information for maximum utility in the field—whether in a refugee camp, operating room, disaster response scene, or other demanding environment. - Helps providers prepare for service overseas, organize data to develop differential diagnoses, assimilate information on infectious and environmental diseases, and effectively serve the patients they will encounter. - Provides concise, easy-to-read coverage of how to approach a differential diagnosis for infectious diseases overseas; nutritional, sexual, and environmental conditions; surgical and anesthesia care; long-term and short-term systems-based challenges, and more. - Covers key topics such as Approach to Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, Medical Response to Disasters, Mental Health in War and Crisis Regions, and Considerations for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. - Acknowledges the wide variance of different cultures, motives, resources, and limitations in the global health arena, and helps readers understand the factors which impact the efficacy and sustainability of care strategies.