Snowmass, Colorado — Here in Snowmass, the weather is great (except for a few thundershowers which are exciting), the temperature temperate and the mountain views, well, magnificent. I’m attending the 2007 conference and annual meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society and today listening to Dr. Paul S. Auerbach, Co-Founder and Past President, Wilderness Medical
Society ( also Clinical Professor of Surgery, Division of Emergency Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center; Editor, Wilderness Medicine; Editor Emeritus,Wilderness and Environmental Medicine; Author, Medicine for the Outdoors).

Auerbach is giving the opening speech focusing on the development of wilderness medicine over the past twenty years as well as the areas of medicine this specialty combines, such as mountain medicine, disaster medicine, rescue and survival, travel medicine, human complications from animals, insects and plants, and including many other sub-specialties.

Skills in wilderness medicine have a lot to do with the care and treatment of people when you have few resources at your disposal that modern medicine considers essential. In incidents of mass casualties where one has to make do with very little, for example, wilderness medicine physicians, and others trained in this medical specialty, are in very high demand.

And it is well known that these medical practitioners are typically very concerned about the protection of the wilderness and preserving the environment.

For all these reasons and more, these wilderness medicine professionals, according to Auerbach, are playing an increasingly critical role in global health care not only in emergencies and natural disasters, but in areas having to do, for example, with the prevention of HIV infection. The question for funders and decision-makers involved in international health care is how to better use this robust, creative and public service oriented group of dedicated professionals to better address the planet’s health needs.