Why has Shannon Carwise-Williams, RN, joined the Texas Medical Advisory Committee for Reach Out and Read? She participated in the enhanced engagement activities supported by a partnership with Elevance Health and is aware of what site coordinator, Kelly Pitts, RN, has said, “This last year I have seen a significant improvement with staff involvement with our patients in promoting reading and activities during the visits; not to mention saying on the next visit, ‘Tell me something about the book you read.’ Literally, on most of our patient comments about improving the facility, the children look forward to coming into the clinic to receive a book.”
Elevance Health, recognizing the potential Reach Out and Read provides to engage families, currently partners with the National Center and Affiliates across the country in California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington State, and Washington, DC.
Drawing on our deep connections within and across the pediatric community to provide universal promotion of positive parent-child interactions, Reach Out and Read is shown to improve patient-clinician relationships and increase participation in well-child visits.
At each Reach Out and Read well-child visit from birth through age 5, clinicians offer anticipatory guidance to parents surrounding literacy ad early relationships. The clinician uses a new book for developmental surveillance and gives it to the child to build their home library.
The quality of these foundational interactions during the Reach Out and Read conversations help shape the trajectory of everything that follows: child development, family resilience, and perseverance through adversity.
Jocelyn McConnell, Affiliate Director for Reach Out and Read Texas, housed at the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth Houston, says, “as we build relationships, knowledge and connections, we are well-positioned as a positive partner in building clinics’ capacity for this work around non-medical drivers of health.”
McConnell said the relationships go beyond the Reach Out and Read program. After her team’s in-depth site support at Fort Cavazos, during the peak of a serious respiratory illness, Carwise-Williams contacted her to request support for training around the critical care of patients who could not be immediately transferred to PICU beds.
While McConnell said this was not an area of expertise or knowledge, she understood that Carwise-Williams saw her as a trusted partner in their health care work and knew she might have contacts in the Texas Medical Center in Houston who could help. Through those contacts, McConnell was able to refer Carwise-Williams to trainings recommended by experts at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital.
“The heart of Reach Out and Read celebrates relationships with the ultimate goal of impacting the health, learning and well-being of young children throughout their lives,” McConnell said. “I so value our partnership with Elevance Health that invests in these opportunities to build supportive relationships with the clinics so that they may best serve the families in their care.”
Elevance Health plays a key role in strengthening and expanding Reach Out and Read’s infrastructure of local connections to promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships, develop critical early literacy skills, mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences, and so much more. Since 2022, Elevance Health has provided over $150,000 to support 15,000 Reach Out and Read well-child visits for children in Bell and McLennan Counties as well as Amarillo, Lubbock, and Tulia, TX. Each well-child visit includes a new developmentally- and culturally-responsive book for the child to keep so the family can read together every day. Titles include I Am Enough by Grace Byers and Kindness: A Celebration of Mindfulness / La Amabilidad: Una Celebracion de la Conciencia Plena by Katie Wilson.
Nationally, Elevance Health has partnered with Reach Out and Read in 13 states and the District of Columbia to support over 110,000 well-child visits and add 110,000 new books to children’s home libraries since 2021. The presence of books in the home is a strong predictor of reading achievement as well as education longevity. Children who grow up in households where books are plentiful go further in school than those without books. Even a little bit goes a long way when it comes to books. Having as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact on propelling a child to a higher level of education, and the more books, the greater the benefit (Science Direct, May 2010).
Together, Elevance Health and Reach Out and Read are working towards providing all children with the strong foundation they need cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically, to succeed in school and in life. We are improving health and academic outcomes for children by supporting families and creating moments that matter.
