Health and Safety in Summer Camps

Abstract

THE INCREASING popularity of summer camping in rural areas presents potential community health problems. In many instances, the campsites have unsafe or inadequate water and sanitary facilities for large numbers of transient visitors. Arrangements in summer camps are usually rustic, in keeping with the short stay of campers and modest operating budgets. Children and adults who populate summer camps have widely varying health needs, and generally they are unfamiliar with the environment and its hazards. Increasing numbers of handicapped children are also attending camps. Although many of these children attend special camps, most of the regular camps can accommodate, with relatively few adaptations, children with varying disabilities. Accidents and infectious diseases, the two most common health problems, are a challenge to medical planning for safe and healthy camping. Most camps undoubtedly recognize their responsibility to provide proper facilities, but there seem to be relatively few official guidelines to assist them in achieving this goal. During the summer of 1963, a survey was undertaken of private summer camps in the State of Vermont to determine (a) medical care facilities and the populations served, (b) medical personnel serving as staff members and medical requirements for campers, and (c) patterns of medical care. The survey was sponsored by the Vermont State Health Department and the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine of the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Licensed summer camps were selected because of their important role in organized summer camping and the comparatively little information available about their facilities and standards of medical care. Government-sponsored facilities, such as parks and wayside campsites, were excluded because of their more standardized, permanent sanitary facilities and their more transient populations.