Community College Education Abroad Health and Safety Concerns

There has been a good deal already written about health and safety with education abroad at four-year colleges and universities. Although the authors found significant publications with a university focus, they found no published literature that specifically addresses community college overseas health, safety, and legal issues. The purpose of this chapter is to review what the literature already says about health and safety challenges and apply it to community colleges. In so doing, they bring forth US court cases and real-life examples at community college education abroad programs in order to ground recommendations and strategies for responding to today's challenges. In the same way that community colleges implement “on campus” policies and procedures to both limit and respond to student health and safety crises, community colleges should also implement policies and procedures to limit “study abroad” risks to students and be prepared to act if issues arise overseas. This chapter provides essential strategies to improve health and safety and legal standards for community college education abroad programs.