At Ranken Jordan, we strive to ensure our patients don’t miss out on rites of passage in childhood. Whether it’s swimming, trying a new sport, or telling Santa what they want for Christmas, we believe kids should be kids whether they’re in the hospital or not.

That’s why we tried something new this year: a summer camp called Adventure ReimagineED.

To the best of our knowledge, our camp is the only in-hospital camp in our region that invites children with complex medical issues and their siblings.

We work with kids all day every day and we’ve learned that when kids get together, they reach therapy goals faster.

Therapy in a group setting is not always feasible, however, so our manager of outpatient therapy, Erica Pfeiffer, and occupational therapist Maggie Scott had an idea.

“We thought, ‘Why don’t we shut down therapy for the week and invite kids to play and do the things they would normally do in therapy but do it together, like camp?’” Erica said.

Erica and her team knew camp would also provide parents an opportunity they never thought they’d have. Families with a medically complex child rarely have the opportunity to send all of their kids to camp because there are few options for children with complex medical issues and summer camps of all kinds can be expensive.

The therapy team piloted the camp idea with 20 kids over winter break in 2024. After a successful first week, they knew they could do it bigger and better in the summer… and that’s what they did.

From June 30-July 3, 2025, our therapists hosted 55 kids over a series of 10 mini camps focused on a variety of activities like dance, golf, even making cookies. We were fortunate to have some of our partners take part, too; representatives from Missouri Botanical Garden hosted a nature camp and the team at McClure Engineering led a science camp.

In addition to fun activities like arts and crafts and swimming, some of the camps were centered around working on developmental skills like communication and feeding.

Available to Ranken Jordan patients, all camps were offered free of charge.

We also invited siblings, a rare opportunity for families with a medically complex child. “Those siblings come here for appointments week after week but don’t get to have fun here,” Erica said. “We also wanted to include siblings because it’s hard for parents with a medically complex child to find a place where all of their kids can go together and everything will be taken care of.”

Camp was just one week but the feedback has been fantastic. One mom of our patient KaLoni (age 5) regularly emails to say KaLoni hasn’t taken off her tap shoes since she left our dance camp!

Harper, age 4, also made incredible progress. “Before camp, Harper required a separate meal because of what she could eat and what she was willing to eat,” Erica said. “But I heard from her mom that the third day of camp was the first time Harper didn’t want a separate meal and she was willing to eat pizza with her family.”

I am immensely proud of our therapy team for thinking outside the box and meeting an unmet need.

So many of our families think, “Summer camp is not an option for us.” That’s what I love about working at Ranken Jordan: we are always looking for ways to reimagine what’s possible.

“It’s something we wanted to do for the community,” Erica added. “We have a lot of goals for next year, like to include inpatients in addition to outpatients, but we definitely plan to do it again. At one point, I saw six kids do new things at the same time and it was just so special.”

We’d like to thank the Costigan family for their generous support to fund our camp, Adventure ReimaginED, celebrating the life of Ed Costigan. If you would like to support the work we do, please consider giving to the Ranken Jordan Pediatric Hospital Foundation at rankenjordanfoundation.org/donate.