International SOS Emergency Insurance
Dual BA Program students are covered by International SOS (ISOS), an emergency services insurance program that supplements your regular health insurance. ISOS provides world-wide assistance in the event of an emergency that requires special evacuation and repatriation services or immediate medical intervention. This is the kind of insurance one hopes never to use or to need, but that you should have in case of a real emergency.
ISOS services include:
- Pre-trip information on travel health issues (including questions about your prescriptions)
- On-site physician recommendations
- Online travel security information
- Emergency message transmission
- Emergency evacuation
- Medically-supervised repatriation
In addition to the services noted above, International SOS offers Enhanced Emotional Support Services, which include up to five free counseling sessions (per academic year) with a certified mental health practitioner while abroad. These sessions can take place via phone, VTC/Skype, or where available, in person.
All Columbia University students, faculty, and staff are required to register their travel outside of the United States through the ISOS My Trips website, and to keep their travel information up-to-date throughout their affiliation with the University. This requirement applies to Dual BA Program students, and includes your time at Sciences Po, meaning that you must enter any short-term travel you take while in France.
ISOS is the world's largest medical and security assistance company, maintaining health clinics and remote-site medical facilities across five continents.
All students in the Dual BA Program will have their time in France automatically registered in ISOS My Trips. However, students who travel to other international locations outside of the United States as part of an official Dual BA trip (whether through Sciences Po or Columbia) are required to register that travel in ISOS manually, using the instructions below:
Once you have finalized your travel plans, please review the ISOS overview, and visit Columbia's Global Travel website. You will be able to access your traveler profile using your Columbia University UNI. All Dual BA Program students are required to log all international trips affiliated with their Sciences Po studies in the "My Trips" portal, aside from their residence in Le Havre, Menton, or Reims in years one and two of the Dual BA Program.
Each time that you book a short trip while you are abroad, you must visit the My Trips site and input your travel information there. This information is used ONLY in the case of an emergency, whether it be a personal health emergency, a political emergency, or a natural disaster. You should use the Columbia University Global Travel website to read more about your travel destination, either within France or elsewhere in the world.
If you are interested in learning more about the services offered by ISOS, please review the Columbia University Global Assistance page. If you have further questions beyond what you find on the website, please contact your academic advisor at the School of General Studies for more information.
Although ISOS offers travel, medical, and security advice and services, as well as online access to information that many insurance companies do not offer, ISOS is not health insurance. ISOS services cannot take the place of the French social security enrollment process, which is required for all four years of the Dual BA Program (even during your time at Columbia University in years three and four). You must maintain your French social security enrollment in order for your Sciences Po student status to remain valid, and you must maintain health insurance during your time at Columbia that is valid in the United States. Requests for reimbursement for medical care received while abroad should be submitted to your French health insurance provider, not to ISOS.
For more information on registering for French health insurance while at Sciences Po in years one and two, please visit the Once Admitted section of the Dual BA website.