Read-Aloud Story Time at the Doctor’s Office

	A student volunteer from O'Dea High School reading to a child in a waiting room at Harborview Medical Center.

Visitors to the Harborview Medical Center Children and Teen Clinic will find the waiting room stocked with books and maybe even a volunteer from the Emergency Room or Medical Records reading out loud. First Lady Laura Bush and several peer-reviewed studies are touting the national “Reach Out and Read” literacy program for its contributions to early childhood education.

Harborview’s Pediatric Literacy Program is modeled after the campaign started by Boston pediatricians and now in place at 145 sites nationwide. Since 1999 the program, sponsored by the Harborview Service League, has helped hundreds of children from low-income families appreciate the power of books and the importance of reading.

Harborview’s Literacy Program provides books for physicians and nurse practitioners to give to children during their visits to the clinic, and offers guidance to parents about literacy. At each well-child visit between birth and 5 years of age, physicians and nurse practitioners ask families to read regularly to their children and chart the progress made. Each child receives a packet, which includes a library card, a list of reading resources, and a bib decorated with the words “Read to Me.”

UW Medicine faculty, residents, staff and medical students often volunteer their lunch hours and coffee breaks to read to children in the clinic waiting areas.

The children’s top 10 read-aloud choices are:

By giving books to young children and encouraging family reading times, the clinic is providing youngsters with an opportunity to succeed in school and life, and to gain a greater understanding of their own community.

According to Program Coordinator Kendra Jones, studies have looked at language in young children, and found an association between the pediatric literacy promotion and statistically significant improvements in preschool language scores, a good predictor of later literacy success. Laura Bush had another way of putting it when she quoted Dr. Seuss in her 2002 address to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Knowing the importance of reading comprehension in succeeding at school and in society, the Discuren Foundation, The Rathmann Family Foundation, the Harborview Service League, and other contributors made gifts to Harboview’s Literacy Program in 2001-2002. The Literacy Program brings together health-care practitioners, volunteers, and parents in helping children from non-English-speaking families and low-income families to read.