The pediatric GLP-1 dilemma at summer camp

By MDLinx staffFact-checked by Davi ShermanPublished August 5, 2026

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There were a handful of kids on [GLP-1s] this summer. I bet next year there will be more.

—Barry Diner, MD, via The Cut

Summer camp medicine is no longer just bug bites, sprained ankles, and homesick kids with stomachaches.

Camp health centers are increasingly managing the realities of modern pediatric care: ADHD medications, antidepressants, growth hormone, food-allergy protocols—and now GLP-1s. Some camp doctors are beginning to see children arrive with the weight loss drugs, a sign that pediatric weight-management treatment is moving well beyond specialty clinics.^[]

The logistics are straightforward enough. Who stores the injection? What happens if a weekly dose is missed? How should staff respond to nausea, vomiting, or poor intake during a hot, highly active week?

The harder question is what GLP-1 use may mean for adolescents’ relationships with food and their bodies.

Camp medicine is getting more complicated

Summer camps have always dispensed medications, but today’s medication rooms look very different.

Now, there are medication rooms lined floor-to-ceiling with prescription drugs, refrigerators stocked with expensive human growth hormone, specialized protocols for food challenges, and daily medication lines that can stretch around the building.^[]

To keep up, many camps now rely on pre-packaged medication systems from specialized pharmacies that sort every dose into labeled blister packs, reducing the risk of medication errors when hundreds of doses are administered each day.^[]

The GLP-1 question

For the right patient, GLP-1s can be an appropriate, evidence-based part of obesity treatment. Semaglutide and liraglutide are approved for adolescents with obesity.^[]

Although GLP-1 use among campers remains relatively uncommon, some children arrive on these medications—and the numbers are expected to rise.^[]

A national analysis of more than 204,000 adolescents and young adults receiving obesity care found GLP-1 therapy increasingly central to treatment.^[]^[] Research is also expanding in younger children: A randomized trial found that liraglutide plus lifestyle intervention improved BMI outcomes in children ages 6 to under 12 with obesity, although no medication is currently approved in that age group.^[]

“There were a handful of kids on them this summer. I bet next year there will be more,” Barry Diner, MD, an emergency medicine physician at a summer camp in Pennsylvania, told The Cut.^[]

That raises several practical questions for clinicians completing summer camp paperwork.

The camp conversation cannot stop at dosage

Unlike many long-established pediatric medications, GLP-1s come with unique considerations that camp medical staff may encounter, including weekly injection schedules, refrigeration requirements, management of missed doses, appetite suppression during periods of high physical activity, and monitoring for nausea, vomiting, dehydration, or abdominal pain.

Many camps may not be accustomed to storing injectable weight-management medications or counseling children who may eat substantially less than their peers during physically demanding days.

Adolescence is also a vulnerable period for body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. GLP-1s do not cause eating disorders, but appetite suppression and weight loss may complicate care for a young person with restrictive eating, binge eating, purging behaviors, or substantial fear of weight gain.^[]^[] The broader cultural pressure around thinness has hardly disappeared, either—a useful reminder that bodies should not be treated as trends.^[]

For clinicians completing camp forms, this is a reason to look beyond the medication list.

Ask—privately and without judgment—about recent changes in eating, body image, compensatory behaviors, and mental health history. Review the medication’s indication, injection schedule, refrigeration needs, missed-dose instructions, hydration plan, and symptoms that should prompt evaluation.

Camp clinicians are practicing outpatient medicine in the woods

The camp medication room increasingly resembles a small outpatient clinic, often with limited staff and few diagnostic resources.

“The vast majority of camps have a very tough time getting doctors,” Dr. Diner said.^[]

Robin Schafer, DNP, a pediatric and psychiatric nurse practitioner at a summer camp in New York, agreed: “Some end up hiring nurses fresh out of school, or school nurses looking to fill their summer, who then discover camp nursing bears little resemblance to the stream of stomach aches and PE injuries they know well. Especially because they can’t send the kid home so their parents can handle the fallout at the pediatrician’s office the next day.”^[]

Clear written instructions matter. So does making sure camp staff understand that “eating less” is not always a simple or benign medication effect.

As pediatric GLP-1 prescribing grows, the goal is not to alarm families or camps. It is to make sure the medical plan supports the whole child—not just a number on the scale.

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