Growing with Quality: A Commitment to Children and Families

February 15, 2023

A commitment to quality is a commitment to children and families, a belief we all share at Reach Out and Read (ROR). Throughout ROR’s 33-year history, impact has been made possible by the work and dedication of staff members, the belief and passion of clinical teams bringing the program to life, and an evidence-based model that has both stood the test of time and evolved to best serve children and families over the years.  

ROR needs to systematize its structure, quality standards, and Affiliate-National partnership to achieve our Next Chapter strategy and full potential as a population-level public health intervention. As the network continues to grow, strengthen, and build upon this foundation, it is more critical than ever to work together, move with urgency, and meet the moment together to serve millions of children. Through the definition of universal high-quality work and support at every level of our organization, ROR also strives to build a culture of unity, transparency, equity, and learning. Reach Out and Read will determine how best to grow with quality and equity to ensure that the children and families needing the intervention have access.   

To build toward this vision, ROR National is collaborating with the Affiliate network to:  

• Define quality standards at the National, Affiliate, and Site levels, 
• Deepen partnership between National and Affiliates,  
• Strengthen and support Affiliate growth in communities across the country.  

ROR has spent the last eight months engaging multiple stakeholders to co-create these standards and is currently using them to establish quality baselines and move forward in continuous improvement and partnership together to meet them. 

Stay tuned for updates and progress on the quality standard journey, and on behalf of Reach Out and Read, we thank you for your partnership and support in this foundational work to grow with quality and equity, to help us build the Reach Out and Read of the future, and to achieve our collective vision in the service of children and families. 

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Growing with Quality, Growing the ROR Team

January 19, 2023

Built on a solid foundation from our collective work last year, we begin this new year with hope and excitement for our future. With a new year, we welcome many new faces in 2023.

Expanding the scale of Reach Out and Read is vital to our organizational priorities and adding highly qualified and talented individuals supports our plans for growth with quality and fidelity to our model. I want to highlight two new senior positions that will help us grow as a public health intervention for all children, families, and communities. 

Johnnetta Anderson joins ROR as our new Chief of Staff. This position will lead cross-departmental initiatives, and she will join the work of the organization’s senior leadership team. Leading the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work will be one of Johnnetta’s primary focuses.

• Johnnetta Anderson bio

  As Chief of Staff for Reach Out and Read, Johnnetta Anderson will lead cross departmental initiatives and coordinate work as a member of the senior leadership team.  A primary focus is leadership of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work aimed at growing the knowledge and competency of staff and advancing equitable and inclusive policies and practices across our network helping to shepherd ROR on that journey and leading the implementation work associated.  Johnnetta brings nearly 15 years of experience working with nonprofits that provide services to underserved communities. She has developed expertise in leadership, Quality Management, process improvement, program management and lived experiences with DEI.  Most recently she worked with the CDC Foundation on the Vaccine/Workforce initiative project team which provided support to state, territory, and tribal health departments across the country to address the Covid-19 pandemic.  Johnnetta is excited to join the Reach Out and Read team and support its impactful mission.

   

  Johnnetta is a community leader who has dedicated her career to supporting people in marginalized communities through her work as a board member for her local Red Cross chapter and as a Rotary Club past president and member. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgia College and State University, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona, and a Master of Business Administration from Mercer University. 

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Artavia Berry joins ROR as the founding Executive Director for the Bay Area. Artavia will focus on strengthening internal operations and sharing stories of impact and opportunity across the Bay Area community. She will oversee program quality across sites and raise the funds needed to sustain and grow our impact.

• Artavia Berry bio

  A native of Chicago, Artavia is a respected, inspirational and visionary leader in the non-profit sector who delivers results for our community. She has led local, national and global initiatives to increase access to opportunities for our most vulnerable community members. 

   

  Artavia was trained under the tutelage of Michelle Obama in community development at Public Allies Chicago. She also served alongside the late Rev. Dr. Addie Wyatt, the late Rev. Willie Barrow and the late Rev. Dr. Leon Finney to create faith-centered social change, with a special focus on youth empowerment. She is an ordained minister, holding a B.A. in Theology and a Masters of Divinity from Grace Christian Seminary; and is an Alumna of Loyola University Chicago. 

   

  Artavia serves on several boards, co-founded a school in West Africa, and co-founded 2 tech startups. She is Chair of the Hayward Community Service Commission, where she helps allocate funding for critical community services and helps to shape public policy related to racial equity & healing, re-imagining policing, homelessness, and culturally relevant education. 

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Please help me welcome our new members to the team and Happy New Year!

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Looking Ahead to 2023 with Strength, Hope and Excitement

December 15, 2022

Reach Out and Read (ROR) is looking forward to strengthening and deepening our impact on the children, families, and communities we serve in 2023. As 2022 comes to an end and we reflect on the past year, we feel gratitude for all the partners and allies we’ve encountered along the way. We look toward 2023 with strength, hope, and excitement.

Joining ROR this year has been both exciting and hard work as we collectively build on three decades of impact to take ROR to even greater heights. Our commitment to public health, combined with the proven success of the ROR model, will serve as a strong foundation for the chapters that lie ahead for the organization. As a team, we will focus on strengthening early relational health for all children and families as we solidify ourselves as an essential population-level intervention for all children across the country.

We have much to celebrate in 2022, and as we transition into a new year, I am deeply motivated by our continued work with our partners at the Einhorn Collaborative and a transformative investment by the Overdeck Family Foundation in our work. We have had many highlights this year, and it’s our dedicated partners, funders and supporters who continue to believe in this work that makes it all possible. By working together, we will have a much greater impact on a child’s overall health and the ability to expand our services nationwide.

This next year, we are also striving to enhance our training model for clinicians to incorporate public health frameworks, build cross-sector connections with pediatric primary care sites and local communities, and bring the voice of parents and families to the forefront to ensure equitable access to all. We want to ensure we do this work from an equity lens throughout the country with continued emphasis on the importance of foundational relationships in early relational health and the future of ALL children.

On behalf of the organization, thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to 2023 with strength, hope, and excitement.

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Leadership on Location

November 14, 2022

After three years, the Reach Out and Read Leadership Conference was finally back in person last month. More than 130 leaders gathered in Madison, Wisconsin to engage with our 2022 theme of Vision, Values, and Voices – a Networked Approach to Supporting Communities.

This event was my first in-person Leadership Conference. It was great to connect with so many people and to feel the passion and commitment for our collective work! I continue to be impressed and humbled by the dedication of our network as we build on the three decades of success working to strengthen our future. The spirit of our affiliate leaders, the commitment of our medical champions, the dedication of our board and staff leaders, and the support of our partners are all part of the ROR magic, and it was on full display in Madison.

Coming together reaffirmed our shared belief that ROR is central to a larger early childhood ecosystem. And, our evidence-based public health intervention strengthens early relational health for children and families and continues to impact communities across the country.

Our time together was filled with engagement and learning, with sessions on diverse books, research on ROR’s effectiveness, and a plenary session on engaging healthcare systems. One highlight included the keynote address by Dr. Janean Dilworth-Bart, who walked us through a history of racial inequity that Black children have faced through time and how movements like ours can and should play a critical role in tackling systemic inequities that persist. It was the ‘journey’ she spoke of that related so well to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work that ROR continues to embark on that resonated with many attendees. It was great to have this moment for our leaders to come together and build community as we continue to grow our work across the country.

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Training 10,000 Medical Providers in Early Relational Health

September 19, 2022

As Reach Out and Read continues our work to scale our model and grow our organization, we are focused on lifting up our role in strengthening the ties that bond between parents and children. Our work promoting early relational health through our model is central to our next chapter as an organization and a critical component of the work being done in partnership with our medical providers across the country. Learn more about how we are working to strengthen these efforts through training and knowledge sharing from our Chief of Research and Innovation Nikki Shearman in a recent recap about this work.

Click here to read the full story.

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Planning for Growth

August 18, 2022

Expanding the scale of Reach Out and Read is vital to our organizational priorities and plans for growth over the next few years. To broaden our impact, we must focus on growing with quality and fidelity to our model, so that all children can benefit from Reach Out and Read while we build an even stronger organization and movement across the country. 

Developing stronger affiliates is essential to the growth plan, ensuring that ROR sites are supported as they strengthen sustainability, raise public awareness and position ROR as national leaders in early child development. 

Developing the Bay Area Affiliate

 

Later this month, I will join a small group of national staff who will travel to the Bay Area in northern California to continue the work of growing a new regional affiliate in the area. Over the past 18 months, the National Office has laid the foundation for the Bay Area by creating a regional advisory committee, raising critical seed funding and hiring a local consultant to navigate the work. We are proud to expand upon the nearly 150 clinics already committed to program quality. 

Our travels will bring us to meetings with key funders, policy leaders, ROR medical providers and other stakeholders as we work to build more support for our efforts and the work of Reach Out and Read in northern California. Meanwhile, the Program Operations and Research & Innovations teams are actively working to conduct quality site visits virtually and plan a virtual convening next month focused on ROR’s role in the Bay Area promoting early relational health and strengthening access to diverse books across our sites. 

Growing an affiliate and expanding our reach is an all-hands-on-deck effort across our national team and will continue in other areas across the country over the next few years as we move to make an even greater impact on the lives of children across the country.    

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Fostering Nurturing, Stable Environments for Children to Thrive

July 20, 2022

As Reach Out and Read looks to strengthen our efforts and expand our reach, it is clear that the need for urgent action to focus on the earliest development and

health of children is being called out by many. As this Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Blog states, “More kids than ever face the prospect of growing up less healthy and living shorter lives than their parents.” This prospect is one that ROR is eager to alter as we build upon our three decades of impact across the country and seek to strengthen early relational health for all children. This blog highlights some of the critical needs and efforts that are recommended to strengthen the focus of health systems, policy leaders, funders, and nonprofit organizations to make measurable advancing in this work.

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Strengthening a Community – An Integrated Approach

June 16, 2022

I continue to experience the power of Reach Out and Read throughout my in-person and virtual travels across the organization. I have learned that our model can work best when it is integrated into systems that support the child and the entire family. As we seek to strengthen our work within the community and in partnership with the community, it helps me to see that value in action. For example, on a recent visit to New York City, I learned how New York City Health+Hospitals/Bellevue is dedicated to initiating, funding, and developing programs that improve the health and well-being of children that visit their hospital for care.

An Integrated Approach

Claudia Aristy, the director and energy behind Bellevue’s ROR program and member of ROR’s National Board of Directors, shared what differentiates their program, “Our integrated approach truly sets us apart. The investment in full-time staff positions dedicated to the ROR program allows us to solicit book donations for older children, supply them to our pediatricians to get them in front of as many children as possible, and maintain a robust pool of volunteers. Beyond that, ROR also has dedicated physical spaces, such as the ROR Reading Corner in the pediatric unit, which ensures parents that this is a normal part of the pediatric experience. We have diverse populations for whom too much intervention causes concern for various reasons—ranging from citizenship status to bad experiences in the past.”

This hospital-wide approach extends into the ROR program. Serving children from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, the program scales for both the volume of patients and the language diversity of its families. Today, they offer books in multiple languages and dialects to their families. They engage them in the variety of resources that exist in the hospital but also in the community. They seek to meet families where they are, all in the name of Reach Out and Read. And all in the name of strengthening the relationship between families and Reach Out and Read and all towards promoting and growing early relational health. Aristy and her team understand that remaining agile, being responsive to their patient population and centering the work within the larger community is part of how Reach Out and Read must play out in a global city like New York.

To meet the needs of the families we serve, we must have an eye on what is happening outside of the clinic. The Children of Bellevue program is a model for how we can prioritize the health of all children, especially those from marginalized and underserved communities. By prioritizing their needs, we are prioritizing the entire community — when children are set up to grow into happy, healthy, and successful adults, we all thrive!

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The Next Chapter

As we move into the next chapter of our work, Reach Out and Read (ROR) strives to serve as an essential public health intervention for all children across the country. Our deep dedication to early relational health and our continued commitment to creating equitable access will ensure that millions of children experience our model in a trusted, caring and equity-centered environment.

On the Road

In my first 60 days, I have enjoyed meeting many of you and learning more about ROR during my visits in person in New York City, Boston, New Jersey, Georgia, Madison, and virtually in South Carolina, Colorado, Alabama, Washington, and Texas to name a few. Although sites and states vary, the dedication to serving children and families is at the core of our work. For example, I have learned about efforts at federally qualified health centers to ensure equitable access to our model for the children who need it most. In addition, I have seen firsthand the impact of COVID on children and families in our clinics. And it is encouraging to gain a greater understanding of the work in statehouses across the country to increase public investment in ROR and ensure that our government partners are working with us to advance our shared goal of strengthening the earliest development of children in their state.  

The Proven Success of Reach Out and Read

My background in public health, combined with the proven success of the ROR model, will serve as a strong foundation for our Next Chapter. We will focus our work on strengthening early relational health for all children and families as we solidify ourselves as an essential public health intervention for all children across the country. 

The Next Chapter’s focus will include:

• Update/enhance our training model for clinicians to incorporate public health framework
• Build cross-sector connections with pediatric primary care sites and local communities
• Bring the voice of parents and families to the forefront to ensure equitable access to all and ensure we do this work from an equity lens throughout the country 
• Continued emphasis on the importance of foundational relationships in early relational health and the future of our children

I am excited to be on this journey with the amazing team that is ROR and hope you join us in this critical work. More to come as I launch this blog to share the lessons learned and connections made along the way.

May 17, 2022

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“Marty’s experience in public health melded with his service mindset makes him a fantastic choice to lead us in our mission to ensure that families nationally feel confident, capable, and comfortable sharing books with their young children.”

– Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, Chair, Board of Directors

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