Embrace Kids is a tight community comprised of patient families, donors, volunteers and students who all share similar values and support each other.
Embrace Kids Foundation exists to lighten the burden, maintain normalcy and improve the quality of life for families whose children are facing cancer, sickle cell and other serious health challenges. Embrace Kids addresses the spiritual, emotional and financial needs of patient families in the New Jersey/New York City metropolitan area.
In 1991, parents, friends and medical professionals joined together to raise funds for children with cancer and blood disorders. What started as a modest grassroots effort has grown and flourished into an impressive organization and a solid volunteer network of parents, patients, professionals, community leaders and students. Over the past 10 years, the Foundation has spent an average of $1.5 million on programs each year and averaged a mission fulfillment of 85%. All of our programs and services are offered at no cost to families.
Embrace Kids Foundation has always been based in New Brunswick, NJ. Embrace Kids is located blocks from Rutgers University and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and has exclusively supported the pediatric hematology-oncology medical team at those 2 institutions for over 30 years. Embrace Kids has jointly started or coordinated programs with Rutgers and RWJ and has also organized many community-based projects with them. Embrace Kids is the beneficiary of Rutgers University Dance Marathon. Since 1991, Embrace Kids has also provided major gifts totaling $4 million to entities now part of Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences and $4 million in major gifts to RWJUH.
Expansion of the Foundation's Mission In 2012
Embrace Kids expanded its mission to support all children with "catastrophic health challenges on the Rutgers-RWJ pediatric campus in New Brunswick." Embrace Kids has provided 6% of our annual budget for this mission expansion so that we can provide a full-time family liaison and financial assistance to pediatric cystic fibrosis, trauma and intensive care patient families.
Embrace Kids Foundation Endowed Chair in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at
 Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ)
In 2014, Embrace Kids committed $1.5 million in funding so as to better pediatric cancer treatment and research at our cancer center. The gift will enable CINJ to recruit a nationally distinguished faculty member, Dr. Peter Cole, to lead the division of pediatric oncology and to accelerate research, especially in the area of precision medicine.
