Planting Joy Where It’s Needed Most

Hospital stays can be scary, isolating, and overwhelming - especially for children navigating serious medical challenges. Coming Up Rosies gives kids and families tangible ways to cope by providing children’s hospitals and child-life specialists with creative, therapeutic tools that calm fears, spark smiles, and celebrate differences.

Our Mission

To restore confidence, happiness and pride to anyone struggling with low self-esteem during their medical journey, especially bald children.

Our Vision

A world where every child on a medical journey ends each day with a sense of pride, confidence, and belonging.

What We Provide

We partner with children’s hospitals and child-life specialists nationwide to equip them with Smile Carts, Smile Kits and a variety of therapeutic, creativity-building activities. These tools provide caregivers new ways to support children’s emotional needs while transforming hospital rooms into spaces of play, expression, and empowerment. Our goal is to boost the emotional well-being of pediatric patients by supplying art- and play-based activities that help them face their fears, find moments of joy, and feel proud of who they are - no matter what their medical journey looks like.

Join us on our mission to turn fear into laughter, treatment into play, and hospital stays into moments of magic. Together, we’re planting joy - one smile at a time.

The idea came to me out of the blue:

"Why not transfer some of her most-prized paintings onto a head scarf? Not only would she have a beautiful head scarf to wear on days she didn’t feel like inviting comments, but the scarf would be her own work. People would be commenting on Rosie’s scarf - her art -- instead of her loss. Best of all, by wearing her own beautiful artwork we could truly “sprinkle” Rosie with a reminder of her abilities all day long. We surprised her with a head scarf we’d had made using one of her more favored paintings. She was overjoyed, and quickly blurted out, “What about the other bald kids? We should make these for all the bald kids who look like me. Can we do that?”
Just like that, she changed a little gift to our daughter into an inspiration and a mission, something I never would have dreamed up myself."
**— Paula Quinn, Rosie’s Mom**

Smile Kits

Each Smile Cart is designed for Child Life Specialists and stocked with Coming Up Rosies Smile Kits - plus curated items from each hospital’s wish list.
We partner with children’s hospitals nationwide to equip teams with creative, confidence-boosting tools that turn fear into laughter, treatment into play, and hospital rooms into spaces of hope. Learn More

Our impact

Since our start in July 2016, we’ve donated over 6,000 Smile Kits to 86 children’s hospitals across 27 US States. We’ve donated Smile Kits internationally to the National Alopecia Foundations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, and Ireland.

Our goal is to reach all independent Children’s Hospitals in the US!

6,000+

Smile Kits donated

86

Children’s hospitals in the US that have an active Coming Up Rosies program.

7

# of Countries that have received Smile Kits or participated in a Smile Kit party.