School of Nursing

Associate Professor

Director of Diabetes and You: Kamp for Kids

"I am the director of the Diabetes and You: Kamp for Kids. It started in 1999 with Dr. Judy Herrman and about 12 campers. I became the director in 2008, so we are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. We have grown to almost 80 campers and children with type 1 diabetes since then.

One day, Dr. Herrman invited me to the camp. She asked me to bring my children, who at the time were only 2 and 6 years old. I think she orchestrated this because she told me that she wanted to stop teaching camp and I fell in love with it after one day. Just seeing how amazing these kids are – they are 5 years old and sticking themselves with a small needle, and they’re OK with it.

I told her, ‘No this can’t stop.’ Since then, I have been completely immersed in type 1 diabetes and this camp.

We are the only camp in the state of Delaware that accepts 4-year-olds. We allow 4-year-olds to come all the way up until they are 18. I have people from Dover, Lewes, New Jersey, Oxford, Pa. and somebody that flies in from California every year. I have college students that will come back and it’s great because the little kids will be like, ‘Wow! If she can do it, so can I. I can still go to college even though I have type 1.’ My research focus is actually the transition to college, so helping them transition to college because they have the highest hemoglobin A1C level of any age group, which is an average glucose over a three-month period.

It’s actually cool to have type 1 diabetes at my camp. At the end of the week, some of the kids without diabetes actually ask for their blood sugar to be checked because, you know, they’re not the cool ones – the kids with diabetes are."