Pediatric Program Reaches Out to Families   

During a regular checkup, pediatricians in the "Reach Out and Read" program give parents a prescription for their children's total well-being: "Read with your children."

Serving more than 1.4 million children and their families each year, Reach Out and Read is a national program that seeks to make early literacy an integral part of pediatric primary care. At every well-child examination for children from six months to five years of age, pediatricians encourage parents to read aloud to their young children and give books to their patients to take home.

The program started at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center) with educators, doctors and nurses bringing books from home to the waiting room so that children could read while they were waiting for their appointments. When it was discovered how quickly the books disappeared, founders Robert Needlman, M.D., Kathleen Fitzgerald Rice, M.S.Ed., and Barry Zuckerman, M.D. developed the Reach Out and Read concept.

"Pediatrics has always gone beyond treating illness to trying to prevent problems," explains Zuckerman. "Promoting literacy is an important and natural step in the evolution of preventative pediatrics."

Over the past 12 years, the Reach Out and Read program has spread across the country with more than 1,100 sites located at hospitals, health centers and private pediatric offices. Thousands of pediatricians and nurse practitioners have received training in how to demonstrate to parents and children the importance and techniques of reading together.

Among supporters are the U.S. Department of Education, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Scholastic, Inc. For information about starting a Reach Out and Read site, visit www.reachoutandread.org or call 617-629-8042.

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Last updated—November 26, 2001 (eal)