🌲☀️ Very happy to have designed and donated these artworks for the new Health Center at Camp Conrad Chinnock, CA — a Type 1 diabetes camp with educational services for newly diagnosed children and their families. 😀
Camp Conrad Chinnock has been running since 1957. It’s the longest-running diabetes camp in California, and one of the longest in the United States. For children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, it’s often the first place they meet other kids who live the same way they do — who check their blood sugar at meals, who wear pumps, who just get it without needing anything explained.
That experience of community — of not being the only one — is something I didn’t have until much later in life. The diabetes online community changed things for me as an adult. Camp does that for children. The two things aren’t so different: both are about finding people who understand without words.
The brief was to create something for the Health Center — the space where medical care happens at camp, where blood sugars get checked, where insulin gets given, where kids go when things go wrong. Making that space feel welcoming rather than clinical matters enormously, especially for children who are newly diagnosed and still learning that diabetes is part of life, not the end of it.
I designed a series of colourful doodles — cheerful, relatable illustrations aimed at children, with the kind of energy that says this is fine, this is manageable, you belong here. They were printed as framed posters and went up on the walls of the Health Center. Through the camp organisation rather than directly with the families — but knowing the work ended up in a room that newly diagnosed children walk into felt like more than enough.
It’s one of those projects where the impact is entirely in the hands of whoever stands in front of it. A child who has just been diagnosed, sitting in a medical room, looking at a colourful doodle that doesn’t look like a hospital. That’s the whole point.
Have a look at what they’re doing: @campconradchinnock
The posters are available in the shop
Some of the designs donated to Camp Conrad Chinnock are available as prints in The Diabetic Survivor store — in three sizes, printed on demand and shipped worldwide.
- Insulin Vial Diabetes Poster — the flying vial with wings and heart
- Insulin Pump Poster — celebrating insulin pump technology
- Diabetes Mental Health Awareness Poster — the heart and pump
- Type One Diabetes Poster — Type One with clouds and heart
Available in 12″×18″, 20″×30″ and 24″×36″. Browse all diabetes posters →