Podcast

Reach Out and Read is On the Air

Engaging conversations with experts in childhood health and literacy.

An award-winning podcast centered on the belief that children’s books build better brains, better family relationships, and happier, healthier children and societies. Join us as host Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a pediatrician with a children’s librarianship degree dives into a wealth of varied early childhood health and literacy topics with expert guests examining the many facets of supporting the parent-child relationship as key to early success.

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Latest Episode

“Building Early Literacy Into Clinical Life” | Oct. 29, 2026

Epic, the most widely used electronic health record (EHR) system, recently made changes to their EHR that smooths the process of documentation and reporting around Reach Out and Read. It’s now easier for clinicians to track shared reading conversations and for clinic coordinators to generate reporting data. Building on long-standing engagement with Reach Out and Read, Dr. Jackie Gerhart, a practicing family physician and chief medical officer at Epic, and Ashley Gibson, the story coordinator at Epic, join us to talk about what inspired those changes, and how — and why — Epic chose to incorporate our work into theirs. 

View the transcript here.

  • Dr. Jackie Gerhart

    Dr. Jackie Gerhart is a practicing family physician and chief medical officer at Epic.

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  • Ashley Gibson

    Ashley Gibson is the story coordinator at Epic where she leads a team of writers who publish case studies and editorials on epicshare.org and in an annual magazine, the Epic Almanac, to help health care providers learn how to use the software to improve patient outcomes. 

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Research shows reading physical books together brings the strongest benefits to children. That’s why we’re happy to have Boise Paper – a responsible paper manufacturer – sponsor this podcast. Through their Paper with Purpose promise, Boise Paper looks for ways to make a difference in local communities. Thank you to Boise Paper for investing in our Reach Out and Read community.

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Award Winning
Two-time winner of an Anthem Award in the Health category.
> Complete list of winners
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Meet the Host

To the best of our knowledge, there is only one pediatrician anywhere who got a master’s in library science in the middle of his medical training, all to learn more about children’s literature. That is our host, Dr. Dipesh Navsaria. A practicing pediatrician in Wisconsin, Dr. Navsaria is the Medical Director of Reach Out and Read Wisconsin, Chair of the Early Literacy Subcommittee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Early Childhood, and many other initiatives involving the psychosocial world of children, their families, and society, from policy to parenting support. A professor of pediatrics and of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, he lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, two children, two cats, a dog, and backyard chickens. He has a deep-seated dependence on wearing bowties, of which he owns far too many…but all of which he can tie without a mirror, in under a minute!

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Meet the host of the ROR Podcast