Reading for Health
“We know that literacy has both direct and indirect effects on health,” says Dr. Laurie Green, of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. “The direct effects are most obvious when people can’t read pill bottles or understand the increasingly complicated instructions they get when discharged from hospital. The indirect effects are even more troubling. Low literacy rates are associated with higher rates of poverty, stress and unhealthy lifestyle practices.”
The first five years of life, when the brain develops, are the most important time for learning says Green, also a staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital.
That’s why Green worked with Dr. Kathryn Dorman, a family medicine resident, to bring the U.S.-based Reach Out and Read program to St. Michael’s in January.
During regular well-child checkups for children ages 6 months to 5 years, Reach Out and Read physicians and nurse practitioners talk to parents about the importance of reading aloud to their children. They give each child a developmentally appropriate book and they maintain a well-stocked library in their waiting rooms. By the time a child in the Reach Out and Read program at St. Michael’s Hospital enters kindergarten, he or she should have a home library of at least five books.
In addition, at their first visit, families will be given a Ready for Reading kit from the Toronto Public Library so that they can bring early literacy tools and resources into their homes to create a literacy-rich environment. The Ready for Reading kit includes the library’s award-winning resource guide, “Let’s Get Ready for Reading: A fun and easy guide to help kids become readers,” filled with research-based tips, activities and recommended reading, developed by expert children’s librarians.
The program builds on the unique relationship between families and their health-care teams at one of the most critical developmental periods in a child’s life.
“Many children, especially those from low-income families, experience barriers to reading at home and miss the opportunity to acquire fundamental reading and language skills. This has a negative impact on their language development and can lead to challenges throughout their educational years and beyond,” says Dr. Green.
The Public Health Agency of Canada lists education as one of the social determinants of health, the social and economic factors that influence people’s health.
Independent research has found that children who participate in Reach Out and Read in their preschool years score three to six months ahead of non-ROAR children on vocabulary tests, and that kids who start school on track are more likely to reach their full educational and social potential.
