From: Dipesh Navsaria <dipesh_at_navsaria.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2010 20:50:34 -0600

I'm pleased to see Reach Out and Read brought up and well-recognized here. I'm one of the physicians involved in ROR for a number of years, and ROR was actually the reason I ended up going to library school as well.

I always realize that the standard "Prescription to Read" dictum I use of 20 minutes/day doesn't necessarily capture the essence of what we're getting at. If anything, my "rx to read" has been more powerful when I've been advocating to colleagues and legislators on behalf of ROR. For families, I find that couching my advice to share books together in terms of early brain development has been very powerful. I don't get into details (unless they ask), but talk about how it "wires neurons well" for "doing well later in school". While I would love to spend more time on the topic with everyone, the limited time available in well-child visits makes this less than practical.

We also took the root ROR concept (which is a primary-care, clinic- based model) and extended it to the newborn intensive care unit, with a lovely picture book library and training for our nurses to encourage families to bring the books back to their baby's room and read aloud to them (or siblings). That was later scaled up to build a 600-book inpatient reading library serving infants through teens, accessible 24/7. We're in the midst of recording hospital physicians, nurses, residents, etc reading stories and putting that as a 'bedtime story' on the hospital's in-house TV channel.

(All of this done with the great help of students from the UW School of Library and Information Science and our dear friends at the CCBC!)

More at http://reading.pediatrics.wisc.edu , if you'd like to know more.

Someone mentioned clergy. I don't think there's any problem with involving clergy as another role model with authority and as a "trusted messenger". My only concern would be making sure that the central message remains "Reading is Fun", and not trying to deliver any other message, irrespective of how worthy it may or may not be. ROR is *very* clear about the fact that the books we distribute are not health propaganda, even if it's something that is socially laudable. I'm part of a committee that's in the midst of revising and codifying the guidelines we use for books selection, and high-quality, developmentally-appropriate books is the number one criterion. I'm sure many clergy would be well able to understand this, but without an overarching structure with formal training (a la ROR), I would hope this principle would remain intact. There's also the issue of knowing what constitutes a "good" book -- ROR is pretty good about making high- quality items available, but when you go outside of that structure (such
 as local donations), I've found some tremendously hideous books put out on carts "for the children".

We have some good data showing that over 90% of children under age 5 have at least an annual visit with a health care provider for a checkup, while one-third of children are in a formal child-care setting, making health care environments a good place to "reach" as many children as possible. I do think there are many more children in child-care settings which are not necessarily formal or held to reasonable standards -- I see far too many children in day cares where they are in front of televisions. Education of early childhood care providers is another key group to target, given they often have a lot of discretion about what to do with their charges. (This is why I'm speaking at the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association conference this coming weekend!)

Peace and Prosperity, Dipesh


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Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MS(LIS), MD Pediatrician Occasional Children's Librarian Madison, Wisconsin, USA e-mail: dipesh_at_navsaria.com web/blog: http://www.navsaria.com
Received on Sun 07 Nov 2010 08:50:34 PM CST