Camp Tick

Over 14 million kids and adults go to camps in the United States each year (ACA). Many of these camps are located in beautiful wooded areas. In the US Northeast and Midwest these woods are home to the blacklegged tick. In addition, summer camp season overlaps with peak activity of the nymphal blacklegged tick, the number one transmitter of the causative agent of Lyme Disease. Thus counselors and campers are at risk of acquiring tick-borne diseases.**

Camps can take measures to prevent tick-borne diseases at camps and to ensure parents recognize disease symptoms when campers are back home. However, in the winter of 2018 we did not find camp-specific tick prevention information, nor were we able to find what camps are already doing to prevent tick-borne diseases.

We asked: What tick prevention strategies can camps use? What is effective at camps, what is affordable, what is logistically feasible?

In other words, what information should be provided to camps to reduce tick-borne diseases in staff and campers.

Therefore, we* started project 'Camp Tick' and

1. Developed a risk matrix for tick-borne diseases at summer camps Assessing people (activities and prevention methods used), vectors and the environment. (Fall 2018 - Sarah Conroy)
2. Created a Wisconsin Summer Camp tick page on the Wisconsin Medical Entomology website for camps (Spring 2018 - Sarah Conroy). The page includes the risk matrix as a widget and information on intervention methods. The table describing tick prevention includes:
   • Cost & difficulty
   • Links where to find more information
3. Surveyed Wisconsin Summer Camps asking about ticks, prevention methods used and barriers to implementation. (Sarah Conroy in collaboration with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services)
4. Piloted a tick education program. (Hannah Fenelon, supported by a Hilldale Scholarship)
   1. To evaluate the feasibility of implementing tick education
   2. To assess the effectiveness of two tick education tools, e.g. were campers educated with tick specimens better at finding ticks on themselves than those educated with the CDC tick images (see below).

My goal is to understand the extend of tick exposure and tick-borne disease acquisition by staff members and campers at camps (i.e. is it actually a problem), and provide camps with logistically feasible evidence-based information to prevent tick-borne disease.

* This work was done in the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-borne Disease and the Wisconsin Medical Entomology lab under the supervision of Dr. Susan Paskewitz, I worked with two undergraduate students, Sarah Conroy and Hannah Fenelon.

** Scientific literature describing ticks and associated diseases at summer camps (not your typical stories):