Reach Out and Read

Reach Out and Read is the only national early literacy organization working directly with pediatric care providers to incorporate the promotion of reading aloud to children every day. Reach Out and Read's mission is to give young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to Read aloud together. Reading aloud to young children is one core strategy for promoting healthy relationships and positive interactions early in life. The program begins in infancy and continues through age five, with a special emphasis on children growing up in under-resourced communities. Pediatric teams who are involved in the organization give brand-new, age and culturally- responsive books and literacy advice to children and parents at each well-child visit through age of 5. The effectiveness of Reach Out and Read's model is recognized by the american academy of pediatrics in a policy statement that recommends early literacy promotion as an essential component of pediatric care. The program is both cost-effective, and evidence-based: research shows that our program results in more frequent reading at home, accelerated vocabulary and critical brain development. In fy23, Reach Out and Read's 36,000 pediatric clinicians served 4.4 million children and shared 7.1 million books at 6,200 program sites around the country. Telehealth visits are still critical due to the lingering impacts of covid-19, which demanded that we find new ways to meet our mission and deliver our program. Our intervention remains in effect for all in-person well-child visits, but we created new resources for clinicians, who could then adapt our model to be effectively delivered for those check-ups that occurred via telehealth. This adaptation, in addition to promoting digital reading resources, enabled us to support families and children in this unprecedented environment.