On October 2, JoyRx launched Digital Live services at NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem in New York City. This new team-up marks our fiftieth healthcare partnership and our seventh in the New York area.  

It’s been a fruitful fiscal year for JoyRx Music’s programmatic expansion across the country. From Portland to Austin to New York City to Memphis — we’re ending our 2023-2024 fiscal year at the end of April 2024 with 46 pediatric hospital and healthcare partners, including 10 new sites in our network.

International Childhood Cancer Day (ICCD) is a global collaborative campaign to raise awareness about childhood cancer and to express support for children and adolescents with cancer, the survivors, and their families.

Today, on February 4, we at JoyRx, the mission delivery of Children’s Cancer Association, are observing World Cancer Day.

At its core, music is medicine — and no one knows that better than our JoyRx Music Specialists. They witness a positive impact on the sick children they serve every day — drawing on the universal power of music to lift and energize spirits.

A recent independent literature review by Karyl Askew Consulting proved what we’ve known all along at JoyRx: that music makes sick kids feel better. And not just emotionally — in addition to benefits for mood and mental well-being, music also decreases pain and anxiety. The impact is all-encompassing, benefiting the emotional, physical, psychosocial and developmental wellness of kids in treatment and improving the overall quality of life and hospital experience for patients, their families and even the hospital community itself.  

Children’s Cancer Association began as one family’s beautiful dream — to bring hope, healing, and joy to children and families facing the unimaginable trauma of serious illness, through specially designed programs, aptly named JoyRx . Thanks to the support of so many, that dream has become a reality: one that has prevailed through 27 years and a global pandemic, delivering JoyRx to more than 10,000 children every year, in 28 hospitals across the country and counting.

Early in the COVID-19 crisis, pediatric hospitalsfaced staffing shortages and programming cuts due to the global pandemic andwere struggling to find engaging and meaningful activities for young patients. CCA staff knew that JoyRx Music was uniquely positioned to meet that critical need, and, together with families and hospital partners, we created a new branch of music medicine programming. We now call this Digital-Live, which complements our On-Demand music offerings, available to kids and families 24/7 at JoyRxMusic.org.