Programs
Camp Ailihpomeh
A week every summer where boys with bleeding disorders are just boys at camp. Running since 1981.
Run by the Texas Bleeding Disorders Camp Foundation
A week at camp with boys who get it
Camp Ailihpomeh — hemophilia spelled backwards — is a six-day summer camp at Camp John Marc in Meridian, for boys from across Texas with bleeding disorders. Dr. Keith Hoots started it in 1981 with thirty-five campers. It now takes around a hundred and forty.
Campers arrive on a Sunday afternoon and are put in a cabin of seven, by age, with three counselors. The days run to four activity periods, a projects period and an activity in the evening — swimming, horseback riding, fishing, canoeing, the climbing course, arts and crafts and more. Meals are family style, campers sitting with their counselors.
Every cabin has air conditioning, toilets, and showers, and the medical side is run by the HTCs — someone from the HTC you attend will be there. For a lot of boys it is the first week away from home and with others that have a bleeding disorder as well — including some of the counselors.
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Who can go
- Boys with hemophilia A or B at 20% or less, type 3 von Willebrand disease, or a rare bleeding disorder treated with intravenous medication at home
- Campers 7 to 14, turning 7 by the first day of camp
- Leadership 15 to 17, turning 15 by the first day
- Followed by one of the participating Hemophilia Treatment Centers (HTC) in Texas
How to apply
Registration for campers and for leadership opens April 1 and closes May 31 at midnight. Applications do not come from us — call your HTC and ask for a camp application.
Camper places are given in the order applications arrive, so it is worth calling early. Leadership places for the 15 to 17s are decided separately, from the leadership packet.
If you are eligible and April has come and gone without hearing anything, call your HTC rather than waiting.
Getting there
Camp runs buses to Meridian from four pickup points:
- San Antonio — at the South Texas HTC
- Austin — at Dell Children’s
- Dallas — at Children’s Medical Center Dallas
- Houston — at the Lone Star Bleeding Disorders Foundation office
Which bus your son takes and what time it leaves is settled after he is registered. Your HTC will tell you.
Find your treatment center — our South Texas centers.
Camp runs on volunteers
Every cabin of seven campers has three counselors, and camp needs volunteers beyond the cabins as well. Registration for counselors and volunteers usually opens in February, ahead of camper registration.
- 18 or over, and not the parent of a camper under 15 or of a first-year camper
- An application, an interview before May 31, a background check, and a couple of training sessions
- Camp gives 150 service hours and a letter of recommendation to anyone who completes the week
Camp Ailihpomeh is run by the Texas Bleeding Disorders Camp Foundation, not by Lone Star. We help fund it and we help families and volunteers find it. Everything about applying, packing and volunteering lives on camp-ailihpomeh.org.