Latest Episodes
This fall: “Spotlight on Poverty” series
The Reach Out and Read podcast launches “Spotlight on Poverty,” a five-episode series on the intersection of childhood poverty and healthy early relationships — and how the early childhood, health, and learning ecosystem can work to mitigate poverty’s impact.
Across 10 weeks this fall, the podcast will feature a variety of voices, from child development researchers and parent educators to Reach Out and Read leaders. Each episode will hit this page as it drops. You’ll find topics for upcoming episodes below.
How can we talk about poverty and early relational health so people will listen? How can you get people to care about public issues that seem insurmountable (but aren’t)? Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning op-ed columnist for The New York Times, joins us to talk about strategies for how to talk about difficult subjects so people will listen (hint: it starts with a story.)
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Nicholas Kristof
Nicolas Kristof is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He is the coauthor, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. His latest book is Chasing Hope. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, one with WuDunn in 1990 for their coverage of China and the second in 2006 for his columns on Darfur.
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There’s a significant amount of data on childhood poverty, but the numbers only tell one part of the story. Cristi Carman and Dr. Philip Fisher of Stanford University join us to talk about how to decipher complex data to better understand the experiences, challenges, and resiliency of young children and their families experiencing material hardship.
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Cristi Carman
Cristi Carman is the Director of the RAPID Survey Project based at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. Cristi leads the research team that administers national, state, and community-based surveys designed to better understand the experiences, challenges, and resiliency of young children and the important adults in their lives.
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Philip Fisher
Philip Fisher, PhD, is the Excellence in Learning Endowed Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. His research focuses on (1) developmental neuroscience of early life adversity, (2) supporting community-based early childhood systems to ensure that all children thrive from the start, and on (3) developing tools and identifying pathways to accelerate the pace of early childhood research. Dr. Fisher is the recipient of the 2012 Society for Prevention Research Translational Science Award, and a 2019 Fellow of the American Psychological Society.
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How can families help prepare their children for school when they’re working multiple jobs, or struggling to buy groceries? Reading a book together can seem like a lot when all your energy is focused on meeting the basic needs of your family. Evidence-based home visiting programs like Parents as Teachers can help with some of these challenges. Jennifer Bronsdon and Emily Callahan of Parents as Teachers at MGH Revere join us to talk about what home visiting is, what it isn’t, and how these programs meet families in their reality – at their homes.
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Emily Callahan
Emily Callahan is a Parent Educator from a home visiting program at MGH Revere Healthcare Center, called Parents as Teachers. She has been with the team for over 5 years working with families experiencing various stressors and challenges in their every-day life. In addition to her role as a home visitor, she is a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician and is pursuing her certification in Lactation Counseling. Prior to her role at MGH Revere, she has had numerous years of home visiting experience working with families of children with developmental delays and disabilities.
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Jennifer Bronsdon
Jennifer Bronsdon is a Child Development Specialist and Certified Lactation Counselor in the Healthy Steps program at MGH Revere Healthcare Center. She is the Program Coordinator of the Parents as Teachers home visiting program at the health center. Jennifer has worked in the Pediatrics department at MGH Revere since 2000. Prior to that, she worked as a home visitor in early intervention. She earned a Master of Education degree in Special Education from Vanderbilt University, and she is a graduate of Dartmouth College.
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Positive, supportive interactions with children may help mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences resulting from poverty. Continuing our spotlight series on poverty and early relational health, Dr. Kate Rosenblum, co-Director of Zero to Thrive at the University of Michigan, joins us to talk about how aligning programs like ours can “promote the health and resilience of families from conception to early childhood through research, training and community partnership.”
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Dr. Kate Rosenblum
Dr. Kate Rosenblum is a clinical and developmental psychologist and a Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, where she co-directs Zero to Thrive, a program that aims promote the health and resilience of families from conception to early childhood through research, training and community partnership. She co-directs the Infant and Early Childhood Clinic in the Department of Psychiatry, and is the developer of a series of “Strong Roots Programs”- a suite of evidence-based integrated mental health and parenting promotion, prevention, and intervention programs designed to bring families together, strengthen protective factors, and promote early relational health.
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In the fifth and final episode in our multi-part series on poverty and early relational health, we look inside our organization and examine the work Reach Out and Read is doing to help families experiencing material hardship. Ruth Coleman, Alex Chu, and Callee Boulware outline how we can use our long-standing experience and in-depth research to focus on under-resourced communities and support meaningful approaches to poverty and healthy early relationships.
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Ruth Coleman
Ruth Coleman is the Senior Director of Growth at Reach Out and Read National.
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Alex Chu
Alex Chu is the Regional Executive Director of Reach Out and Read North East Region, which includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Upstate New York, and Maine.
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Callee Boulware
Callee Boulware is the Regional Executive Director of Reach Out and Read in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
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