To boost literacy, pediatricians are prescribing books to children
Pediatricians at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia hope to expand a program in which providers model reading for parents during well visits.
Pediatrician Daniel Taylor opened a crisp hardcover book and began reading to a 5-year-old patient inside an exam room at the clinic at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.
“I am laughter that falls like —,” Taylor read, pausing.
“Rain!” the little girl finished, smiling.
“That was amazing,” Taylor said to the girl’s mother, LaShonda Williams, 35, of East Mount Airy. “That’s nice phonetic awareness.”
Williams’ daughter, Xylo, already grasped context and recognized some words. Both crucial skills for school readiness as she prepares for kindergarten this fall.
Xylo and her two siblings — 12-year-old Isaac and 9-month-old Xymia — each got a new book suited for their ages during Wednesday’s checkup. Seated on her mother’s lap, Xymia pointed to a carrot in the First Book of Colors, demonstrating a skill infants ideally master by age 1.
Taylor is one of a growing number of pediatricians who are using books to measure developmental milestones, bolster literacy, and connect with families.
The program, “Reach Out and Read,” a national nonprofit literacy group that started in Boston, is celebrating its 25th year at St. Christopher’s in North Philadelphia and its 30th anniversary at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in West Philadelphia.
Participating pediatricians model reading aloud for parents and prescribe reading to children during each well-visit from birth to age 5, although St. Christopher’s program extends into early teens. The children keep the books, building home libraries.
“North Philadelphia is considered `a book desert,’ where there aren’t a lot of bookstores — i.e., none — and families don’t have a lot of children’s books in their homes,” Taylor said. “Just like food insecurity and trying to feed people food. Here we’re trying to feed people with words and books.”
Caregivers often don’t have time or don’t feel safe traveling to their local library in city neighborhoods with high crime, Taylor said.
Taylor helps run “Reach Out and Read” out of the hospital’s Center for the Urban Child, which he described as “an outpatient academic pediatric integrated practice” that sees about 48,000 children a year. There, families can access both medical treatment and social services.
The burgeoning brain
The Pennsylvania chapter of “Reach Out and Read” has grown from three clinics at CHOP in 1996 to 264 pediatric practices today, mostly in the Philadelphia region. Now, local organizers say they plan to expand the program statewide by an additional 100 sites within the next few years.
Pediatrician Trude Haecker, one of the founders of CHOP’s “Reach Out and Read” program, said parents who get a book during a well-visit are two and a half times more likely to read to their child. The research also shows that reading is an important part of the brain development that occurs within the first three years of a child’s life, Haecker said.
“The brain is burgeoning, so in the first three years of life, 80% of your brain is formed,” Haecker said in an interview last week. “There’s a million neurons a second being formed in that first year of life, which is incredible. So having that ability to engage with that child changes that child’s brain.”
Reading to your child also helps offset adverse childhood experiences, like divorce or substance use, Haecker said.
“We’re also really changing that child’s lifetime trajectory,” she added. “It’s really magical.”
A recipe for school success
An estimated 46% of children in the Philadelphia school district are not prepared with the skills they need to start kindergarten. Those children lag in vocabulary, language, reading, and listening skills, according to Taylor.
One of the greatest predictors of whether a teen will graduate from high school is how well they read by third grade, which is directly tied to their speaking skills at age 3, Taylor said.
“So we’re trying to get as many books in the home as possible so that a 3-year-old is saying three-word sentences and a lot of words,” he said.
Taylor said St. Christopher’s raised more than $120,000 last year for new books through its annual basketball tournament fundraiser. The program has given out nearly 1 million books, written in English and about a dozen other languages, since 2001, he said.
“This is one of the most joyous things we do,” Taylor said. “It’s not giving shots; it’s giving immunization against potential future literacy issues.”
