Reach out and Read

CFH staff member hands a young boy a book in the waiting room of a health center.

What comes to your mind when you think about a doctor’s office waiting room?  Outdated magazines? Clipboards with pages and pages of forms?  How about what a homeless child thinks about? The uncertainty or anxiety about what’s going to happen there—when there’s already so much of that in their lives? Thanks to our partnership with Reach Out and Read, we are transforming the waiting rooms in our family health centers into engaging and inviting resource spaces, providing free, age-appropriate books for our youngest patients, alleviating some—if not exactly all—of that anxiety.  The partnership has become an important tool in affirming for our patients experiencing homelessness, that health care can be a pleasant and empowering experience—for the whole family. 

It was twenty seven years ago when two Boston Medical Center pediatricians realized their potential to have an impact on the youth they served by prescribing books to foster a language-rich interaction between parents and their children. Today, the organization has nearly 6,000 program sites nationwide, including seven Care for the Homeless (CFH) sites. Did you know that half of children living in poverty in the United States start kindergarten without the essential skills needed to be successful in school?  In addition, studies show that more than 95 percent of a child’s brain is formed within the first six years of life. This is why all seven of CFH’s health centers serving homeless family shelters in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, are all participating in the Reach Out and Read program.

Positive, responsive parenting during the early years creates the strong parent-child bonds that promote healthy brain development. “Our goal for the program is to encourage bonding and reading in pediatric age groups by using traditional doctor’s offices as a site for positive experiences for children,” said Dr. Regina Olasin, CFH Chief Medical Officer. “The age appropriate books go along with health promotion and well child exams. Our primary objective is to encourage young mothers to read and speak to their infant children, in order to support active bonding,” she continued.

Before partnering with the Reach Out and Read program, CFH employees and other various donors would bring in children’s books to be used and distributed at the family health centers. “We wanted to promote reading, but faced the barrier of not having enough books for everyone,” said Gabriela Gonzalez, CFH Health Education Project Coordinator. That changed after Reach Out and Read was introduced. “There has been such a huge shift in what we’re seeing, with children telling their parents to bring them to the health center because they want to pick a new book,” Gabriela explained. 

The program also allows community members to come in and have reading sessions in the health centers. “CFH is actively transforming our waiting rooms into patient resource centers. We are eliminating stickers and lollipops and replacing them with books. We’ve also been encouraging children to take a book for their brother or sister,” Dr. Olasin says.

The Reach Out and Read program turns CFH’s traditional “waiting room” into a resource center, where patients—children and adults—can learn about and expand their health knowledge, eliminating the unproductive “waiting” part of getting high-quality health care. CFH has been a proud recipient of children’s books from Reach Out and Read for the past 18 months and we look forward to continuing this program to deliver client-centered health care to families and individuals experiencing homelessness.