Pediatricians Reach Out and Read to young patients

Supporters say literacy promotion has a place in primary care.

By Delia O'Hara, AMNews correspondent. March 26, 2001.

Every chance he gets, Peter Noronha, MD, perches on a tiny chair in the waiting room of the busy Chicago pediatric clinic he helps run and reads simple stories from slim, colorful books to any child who will listen.

It is, he says, one of the most important parts of his job.

Dr. Noronha, associate head of pediatric education and program director of pediatric residents' training at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School, believes that books are as important a medical tool as his stethoscope in the clinic where he serves mostly low-income families. That is why he is a regional trainer for Reach Out and Read, a physician initiative developed 12 years ago by two Boston pediatricians.

ROR, which in those dozen years has quietly become one of the most important preschool literacy programs in the country, takes the view that literacy is a public health issue, that children who love to read will have better, healthier lives, and that physicians can and should provide anticipatory guidance about why and how to share books with preschool children of families that might not naturally view reading as an enjoyable activity.

Physicians in the ROR program not only counsel parents; they also give one new book at every well-child visit from the age of 6 months to 5 years. That way every child in their care owns at least 10 books by the time he or she enters kindergarten.

"We are trying to institute literacy promotion as part of primary care," says Perri Klass, MD, a pediatrician, author of six books, including two novels, and medical director at the ROR national center in Boston. "It's about knowing and loving books." [...]