A few Reach Out and Read facts:

• More than 19,000 books are given to children at clinics each year.

• 129,000 books have been given to children since the program's implementation.

• In four of the clinics we serve, 46% of patients are uninsured and about 63% are at the poverty level.

• There are 15 clinics served by Reach Out and Read:

Health and Social Services Clinics in Fairfield and Vallejo; La Clinica in Vallejo; Sutter Regional Medical Foundation in Fairfield and Vacaville; Kaiser Permanente in Fairfield and Vacaville; Vacaville Community Medical Center; NorthBay Healthcare Fairfield and Vacaville.

Reach Out and Read

Reach Out and Read is a pediatric literacy program we support in partnership with Solano County Library, small health clinics in the county and larger medical groups such as NorthBay Healthcare Foundation, Sutter Regional Medical Foundation and Kaiser Permanente. It makes literacy promotion a standard part of pediatric care.

Understanding that the time to start reading to children is in infancy, pediatricians and healthcare providers incorporate books and reading into well baby checkups for children from birth to five years old. During the check up, health-care providers give parents concrete, developmentally appropriate advice about reading, as well as use books as an assessment tool in determining the child's development. At the end of each visit, the child is given an age and language appropriate book.

The Reach Out and Read program model is based on research that shows a connection between the frequency of sharing books with babies, toddlers and young children and enhanced language development. Research also shows that preschoolers need 1000 hours of contact time with literacy activities to be ready for kindergarten. By distributing books through local pediatric offices, Reach Out and Read reaches children (and their parents) earlier than most other reading programs, with dramatic results.

This popular program is growing. Since its inception, the program has grown from 2 points of distribution and 2,671 books in 2000 to 14 points of distribution and more than 129,000 books to date.