health history form

The primary purpose of this form is to provide helpful information to the staff and/or to hospital staff in case of a health problem or emergency during camp. Also, it is imperative that if you have any kind of mental health or other condition that might pose a challenge for you at camp, or impact others negatively, you let us know very clearly on your health history form. We may want to talk with you and/or your parents ahead of time, too. In these situations, ignorance is not bliss for anyone—the camper involved, the staff, or other campers.

Another purpose of the form is to protect us legally, so please fill it out completely for our sake as well as yours. If a question doesn’t apply to you, like if you don’t have a family physician, please write in “none” or “N/A.”

Important: if you've already told us something about your health (during the registration process, or otherwise), you still need to also write it down on the form.

If you think you might attend camp again in the future, we suggest that you make a copy of your form so you can work from it next time. We require a new health history from each camper each year.

You absolutely may not attend camp if you don’t provide a filled out and (if you are a minor) signed-by-parents health history form.

Concerns with the form?

We occasionally have campers whose families prefer to limit their use of conventional medicine, and thus find our form challenging. If that applies to you, here are a couple tips:

If due to your religious or other beliefs you don’t have conventional physical exams or immunizations, etc., please just complete the parts of the health history that apply to you. But you also need to attach a clear note, signed by your parents (if you are a minor), explaining why there are blank spots. You must still fill out all parts of the form that you can, and the signature section on the back must be completed.

Occasionally we have a camp family who chooses to avoid conventional medicine even in some emergency situations, and so they prefer not to sign the medical release form as it is. If that is true for you, you need to attach a separate letter, which spells out in clear detail what sort of emergencies you are willing to have handled medically, and how—i.e. in life-threatening emergencies perhaps you are willing to go to a hospital. If you wish to do this, be brief and clear (in an emergency we don't want to slog through lots of complex prose) while still being complete, and your letter must be typed or printed very legibly. You might fill out the release and then write, “This release is valid for life- or limb-threatening emergency situations only,” etc. The letter must be signed and dated by at least one parent, preferably both. (We may also contact you prior to camp, to make sure we clearly understand your position.)

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