CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – When Peter Paulsen’s mother, Elsa, founded Camp Holiday Trails back in 1974, she wanted to make sure children dealing with medical conditions had the same access to summer fun as their healthier counterparts.

“She just believed in not allowing any kind of artificial barrier to anything,” Paulsen, now the camp’s Board President, said Thursday.

That work has continued for over 50 years and Thursday, the camp celebrated the opening of its new medical care center, Med Korner, with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The upgrade will both enhance the care for campers and allow the camp to serve even more children.

Camp Executive Director Tina LaRoche said the camp currently serves about 300 children during the summer, and another 300 out-of-season with family camps and pop-up camps around the Mid-Atlantic region. That number will now go up, she said.

For 52 years, Camp Holiday Trails has been providing children dealing with medical conditions the chance to enjoy a true summer camp experience at its 73-acre wooded, hilltop property five miles west of downtown Charlottesville. The camp has a swimming pool, canoeing lake, zipline, horses and a variety of other outdoor activities.

But, vitally, it also has the medical staff and facilities to support a wide range of medical conditions in children. Camp staff can do dialysis, respiratory treatments, diabetes care, and catheter work.

Plans for the new medical center began in 2024. About 18 months ago, they broke ground on the 2500-square feet, $2.4 million Med Korner, now the largest of the camp’s 17 buildings and the first with an elevator.

The first floor has three treatment rooms, a sensory room, and two overnight rooms for staff. The second floor includes a training room, a multipurpose room, two offices, a kitchen, a balcony and a supply shop where campers can obtain things they may have forgotten or lost. An elevator links the two floors.

“Our goal is to keep kids here,” LaRoche told Cville Right Now before the ribbon cutting. “We don’t want to have to send kids to the hospital. So, if we can go all that care here, then kids can stay at camp.”

Thursday’s event included remarks by LaRoche, Paulsen and Medical Director Dr. Ina Stephens, who told those in attendance that the camp provides a unique service to the community.

“We try to make this experience here at camp be real-world, even though they have such medical complexities, and let them be free but being treated at the same time,” Stephens said. “I don’t think that’s part of most doctors’ training. They’re taught how to treat a patient in the emergency room or in the treatment room or in the hospital, not in the real world.”

Stephens said the new building elevates the camp’s ability to do that.

“This medical center is sending, not only a message to those patients, but to the parents, to the medical community, that we are here for them and we want to take care of these medically complex kids and let them have a real experience in the real world,” she said.