Reach Out and Read Georgia was recently awarded funding from Project Launch to pursue a partnership with the Health Promotions Division of the Maternal and Child Health under the Georgia Department of Public Health in Muscogee County.

Reach Out and Read Georgia’s mission is to prepare Georgia’s youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with pediatricians to prescribe books and encourage families to read together with the ultimate goal to help ensure that every young child in Georgia – regardless of household income, parents’ education levels, or other socioeconomic factors – arrives at kindergarten with the basic language skills necessary to learn to read.

More than half, or 143,178, children ages 3 to 4 in Georgia are not attending preschool. In Muscogee County, 44.8% of eligible 3 and 4-year old’s don’t attend preschool. Many of these children will arrive at the classroom without either the cognitive or social-emotional skills necessary to start to learn, and start school at a disadvantage. 26.2% of Georgia’s children live in poverty and in Muscogee County that number climbs to 31.7%.

Mia Neal, Project Launch Coordinator in the Department of Public Health in the West Central Health District said, “We are excited to expand the Reach Out and Read Initiative for children in Muscogee County. Our goal is to ensure children are equipped with social, emotional, cognitive and physical skills necessary for school and life. We are thrilled to collaborate with the physician community on this effort.”

Reach Out and Read is an evidence-based national nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud at regular pediatric checkups. The model includes providing a new, age-appropriate book for each child to take home at every checkup from 6 months through 5 years. Along with the free book for every child, doctors and nurses also provide guidance to parents about the importance of reading aloud with their children every day.  

What distinguishes Reach Out and Read from other interventions is that it has a large and growing evidence base. Since 1991, the Reach Out and Read model has been studied by academic investigators in a variety of settings, providing 15 peer-reviewed research studies on the effects of the program. The body of published research supporting the efficacy of the Reach Out and Read model is more extensive than for any other psychosocial intervention in general pediatrics.

“This partnership, will in part, help support our goal of sustaining and expanding our program to serve 8,952 young children and their families in Muscogee County,” said Amy Erickson, Reach Out and Read Georgia Executive Director.

Rivertown Pediatrics began implementing the Reach Out and Read Georgia program in 2004 under Dr. Debra Cheek’s leadership and has distributed 79,058 books in total to their children and families. Ft. Benning joined in 2013 and has distributed 11,249 books to date. Dr. Katie Westerfield, DO, IBCLC CPT, MC, Family Medicine Residency Faculty at Martin Army Community Hospital at Ft. Benning is a Reach Out and Read Georgia Advisory Board member and has been instrumental training residents in the program. Ft. Benning hosted a site visit with First Lady Sandra Deal a few years ago which provided an opportunity to highlight the program in action.

To this end, the Project Launch grant will support Reach Out and Read Georgia in sustaining and expanding the early childhood literacy outreach program by recruiting and training new medical providers and staff and providing resources to purchase children’s books and materials. The program was recently adopted at Columbus Regional Pediatrics, led by Dr. April Hartman and reaches 3,500 new children and families.  

Working within the existing health care system Reach Out and Read Georgia collaborates with pediatricians, other medical professionals, and strategic partners to help prepare Muscogee County next generation of future students for school and success in life.    

Erickson said, “Our hope is that one day we will reach all children who live in poverty to equal the playing field before their first day of school. This grant will help us get further down that road.”

The Reach Out and Read model is supported by 15 independent, published research studies. Families served by Reach Out and Read read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten with larger vocabularies and stronger language skills, better prepared to achieve their potential.

For more information, please visit http://www.reachoutandread.org/georgia/. Find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/reachoutandreadgeorgia and follow us on Twitter @reachoutreadga.