Medical camps mean summer fun for everyone

A safe, fun camp experience for children with health issues — and a way for medical specialists to volunteer their expertise? It’s a win-win.

Summer camp is a time for outdoor adventures, arts and crafts, nights around the campfire, making memories with new friends, building confidence, independence and so much more. And Camp Victory is no different.

Situated on a 130-acre property in Millville, Camp Victory is built specifically to offer that classic childhood experience to kids with special needs and serious health issues. From April to October, kids across the country come to enjoy all the fun activities you’d expect from summer camp. The difference: These are accessible to all abilities, from treehouse ramps to paved trails to specialty harnesses for using a rock-climbing wall and zip-line.

Camps are set up by medical condition, including cancer, spina bifida and autism, and include their own specialized medical support staff, in addition to a central “med shed” for things like medication distribution, catheterization and even chemotherapy or dialysis. Staffers donate their time — and many return year after year to give kids a magical week of staying in cabins, swimming, biking, archery, fishing, crafts, challenge courses and talent shows in an environment built for them.

“For many of these kids, it’s their first time away from home and their parents,” says Paul Bellino, MD, a Geisinger pediatric hospitalist and Camp Spifida’s medical director. “It’s their chance to be a kid first, while building a peer group around others facing similar challenges and fears. It’s a life-changing experience for kids — and parents, too.”

Geisinger has been a corporate partner since Camp Victory’s inception in 1994, annually contributing medical personnel and supplies, and supporting the budgets for various partner groups through grants from Children’s Miracle Network. What started as a few loosely arranged camps for kids with cancer, diabetes and kidney disease has grown to include more than 15 partner camps today.

Each camp works a little differently, based on kids’ varying medical or behavioral needs and physical abilities, yet all have the same mission: to create a fun, safe camping experience for children.

“Camp Spifida is such an impactful part of childhood that many campers come back as counselors, so they can continue to be a part of this extraordinary experience and give back,” says Dr. Bellino. “The camp is really that special.”

‘Life-changing experience’ for kids

Year after year, Camp Spifida gives campers with spina bifida a weeklong experience they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have — by offering the most specialized medical support with a 1-to-1 ratio of campers to counselors.

Kids ages 6 to 18 stay overnight in cabins, each with an assigned medical provider, and days are structured with set mealtimes, medical services and activities with built-in free time. But besides having fun, campers take away so many other positives.

“This camp has been the single most important and life-changing experience of my life,” says repeat camper Katherine Petersen of Connecticut. “It gave me lifelong friends that have supported me through depression, surgeries, illnesses — and helped me celebrate my successes! My experiences over the past 5 summers at Spifida have helped lift me up and form me into a fierce, determined young adult.”

For nearly 30 years, Dr. Bellino has coordinated care for the 75-plus campers that participate each summer with a volunteer crew of about 10 Geisinger pediatricians and a dozen subspecialists. Geisinger School of Medicine Phase 3 medical students and pediatric residents also join in to learn things no amount of time in the classroom or hospital can teach.

In fact, recent School of Medicine graduate Dayna DeSalve is so grateful for her experience, she plans to return this summer. 

“As volunteers are paired 1:1 with a camper, I was able to see how prescribed medications, recommended equipment and bladder management are incorporated into the day-to-day routine of my assigned camper,” she says. “It allowed me to recognize how medical advice and treatments influence a child's daily life on a level I could not have experienced in the clinical setting.”