making books part of a healthy childhood

Our Mission

Making literacy promotion a standard part of pediatric primary care, so that children grow up with books and a love of reading.

Alabama's children will be better prepared to learn when they start to school because pediatric health care providers incorporated pre-literacy counseling with families into their well-child visits and provided new books at each of those visits.

Reach Out and Read-Alabama (ROR) makes literacy promotion a standard part of pediatric primary care so that children grow up with books and a love of reading.

ROR trains doctors and nurses to advise parents about the importance of reading aloud and to give age-appropriate books to children at pediatric check-ups from six months to five years of age. Building on the unique relationship between parents and medical providers, ROR helps families and communities encourage early literacy skills so children enter school prepared for success in reading.

Unlike traditional childhood literacy programs, the objective of the ROR model is to deliver specialized early literacy counseling and support. ROR achieves this by taking advantage of the unique access that pediatric primary care providers have to children while they are in their critical years of cognitive and language development - six months through five years old. Three program components complement and reinforce one another:

• At each well-child visit from six months through five years, children receive a new, developmentally and culturally appropriate children's book from medical providers. By the time they begin school, children acquire a home library of at least 10 beautiful children's books.
• In the examination room, physicians and nurse practitioners offer parents tips and age-appropriate advice about the importance of reading with their young children, including materials to take home.
• Volunteers read stories and look at books with children in clinic waiting rooms, thereby modeling for the parents reading aloud techniques.

Reach Out and Read-Alabama is an early literary program of the Alabama Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, affiliated with the Reach Out and Read National Center.