EarlyWell Priorities Spotlight: Reach Out and Read

Formed in partnership with the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF), the EarlyWell Initiative works with parents and families, health practitioners, care providers, and community leaders to advance public policies that improve social emotional health for North Carolina’s children ages 0 to 8.  

The EarlyWell Coalition is focused on policy priorities that strengthen mental health support for infants, toddlers, young children, and families in North Carolina. One of EarlyWell’s priorities is to increase funding for Reach Out and Read, a program that promotes early childhood literacy in pediatric care settings.  

I sat down with Amber Pierce, NC State Director for Reach Out and Read, to learn more about the program and how it supports infant and child mental health. 

 

EMILY: Hi Amber! Tell me a little about yourself and your work with Reach Out and Read. 

AMBER: Hi Emily! I’ve been with Reach Out and Read for a little over seven years now and I currently serve as the state director for North Carolina. Reach Out and Read is a national nonprofit, and our regional affiliate supports ROR programs across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and D.C. Just in North Carolina, we partner with more than 400 clinics and more than 2,700 trained clinicians to implement our model. This is really exciting and encouraging because we are reaching children in more than 780,000 well visits each year! 

EMILY: How does the Reach Out and Read model work?  

AMBER: Reach Out and Read is an evidence-based intervention that lives intentionally in the medical home, in those well-visit encounters, and serves children birth through age five. Before I go any further, I want to point out that this model helps us meet parents and young children where they are by leveraging a system that they are already navigating. This is one of my favorite things about our work–ROR is meant to be a universal touchpoint and families don’t need to sign up or meet eligibility requirements. 

We support and train primary care clinicians—pediatricians, family medicine practitioners, nurse practitioners, physician assistants—to integrate the intervention and the book as a core component in the routine medical care they’re providing to children during well visits.  

The intervention itself is based around the model of prescribing shared reading between parents and children to foster positive, language-rich interactions between families beginning at birth. When kids are in that birth to age-five range, they’re going through rapid neurological development, and when kids can build their language and emotional skills, that really sets the stage for school readiness, nurtured relationships, and positive mental health.  

EMILY: What is the benefit of reading aloud and fostering early literacy in childhood? 

AMBER: We know that the optimal time to influence a child’s future is actually long before they enter school—and Reach Out and Read’s intervention is designed to support clinicians in offering anticipatory guidance about key developmental milestones, hopefully mitigating potential developmental delays. For instance, by incorporating some components of early childhood education in pediatric primary care, Reach Out and Read helps foster kindergarten readiness. Those first building blocks of learning are laid during the first two years of life through those early social and emotional exchanges, and future learning is built on this foundation. 

More than that, reading aloud together helps create lasting emotional connections between parents and their children, it helps stimulate a child’s cognitive development, and it really lays the groundwork for a lifelong love of reading and learning.  

EMILY: Advocating for additional support to Reach Out and Read is one of the priorities of NC Child’s EarlyWell Initiative. So, EarlyWell works to enrich the landscape around infant and child mental health in North Carolina—can you tell me more about where that connection point is between EarlyWell and Reach Out and Read?  

AMBER: Reach Out and Read’s focus on promoting early childhood literacy stems from an understanding that the benefit shared reading provides—emotional connections between parents and children, cognitive development, and language acquisition—all have a direct impact on a child’s development of positive mental health.  

I think sometimes when we think about mental health, we think about certain diagnoses, and we usually envision that mental health is something to focus on when kids are in middle and high school. In other words, we don’t often think about the mental health of babies and very young children outside of cognitive milestones. What I appreciate about the EarlyWell Initiative is that there is a focus on spreading awareness about how attention to promotion and prevention in early childhood plays a critical role in helping mitigate downstream mental health concerns.  The work we are all doing together is helping families build a strong foundation that promotes lifelong positive mental health.  

EMILY: I saw that Reach Out and Read has some programs specifically geared towards serving kids who may have developmental disabilities and learning style differences. Can you tell me a little more about this?  

AMBER: Absolutely! Reach Out and Read’s Developmental Disabilities Initiative is one of my favorite things. The Developmental Disabilities Initiative provides training above and beyond the core ROR model and equips clinicians with specialized strategies and tools geared toward specific developmental needs such as those associated with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Hearing and/or Vision Loss, and Speech and Language Delays.  

As an example of what this looks like: I have two boys with ADHD and when they were younger, it could be really difficult for me to sit down with them and keep them focused while we read 

for longer periods of time. That being said, we’ve been reading together every night since the day they were born – it is truly a gift at the end of the day!  The books that would be most effective for them are ones that have different kinds of illustrations, maybe some interactive components, and other features that would help foster attentiveness and deeper engagement.   

Reach Out and Read’s Developmental Disabilities Initiative is a great example of how we are working to ensure our model is accessible for ALL the types of children and families we serve!  

To learn more about Reach Out and Read, visit their website. To learn more and get involved in the EarlyWell Initiative, visit the Initiative’s webpage and/or contact NC Child Health Policy Manager Hannah Preston at hannah@ncchild.org.