Festival Health Services

What is Festival Health?

Festival Health is an integrated health care model that offers a more holistic approach to event medical services.  Through this approach, traditional medical and emergency response services are paired with a broader scope of health promotion, injury and illness prevention and harm reduction. 

The main medical tent serves to meet the festival guests’ acute medical needs, by providing first aid services, monitoring guests with moderate intoxication, treating many festival related health care issues such as heat exhaustion, dehydration, etc. 

The Festival Health tents expand on these services by also providing ways to support guests to promote safe, healthy behavior, prevent illness or injury and reduce harmful outcomes associated with festival attendance. The aim of all these medical services is to promote a positive, safe festival experience for the attendees.  In addition, we hope to reduce the number of hospital transfers needed thus mitigating the potentially negative impact of the festival on the larger community.

#howcanwehelp

  • Providing information about common recreational drugs and their potential risks
  • Providing a safe space to sit and talk to someone about what consent means and how to stay safe on event
  • Encouraging young people to stay in groups and plan for safe ways of getting home after the festival
  • Encouraging guests to wear sunscreen and/or get out of the sun on a hot festival day and stay well hydrated  
  • Providing access condoms at no cost to promote safer sex (we know they are doing it so at least they can be protected)
  • A diabetic being able to safely dispose of their used needles while on site
  • Providing a quiet place for a guest to chill out when they are feeling overwhelmed and anxious
  • Providing ear plugs to prevent hearing loss
  • Harm reduction is a philosophy of providing education, products, or interventions that reduce the risk of illness, injury or harm without requiring abstinence from the potentially harmful activity.
  • Our lens of one of acceptance rather than judgment i.e. “If you are going to do it, at least do this.”
  • Providing supportive care to someone experiencing the negative effects of substances they took