Reading program grounded in well-child visits aims to get more books in the hands of Pa. kids

Sabrina Bezzou’s eyes lit up when her pediatrician, Michael Bertenthal, handed her the book.

“What’s that girl doing?” the doctor asked, pointing to an illustration of a girl roughly Sabrina’s age, 8 years old.

“She’s skateboarding,” Sabrina exclaimed.

Sabrina and her 5-year-old sister, Elena, who were dressed in matching T-shirts with bedazzled ice cream cones, each received a new book during their visit at UPMC’s Child Development Clinic in Oakland in mid-August, as part of a national childhood development initiative called Reach Out and Read. The family moved from Algeria 18 months ago.

It sounds simple, but this is a tool Pittsburgh pediatricians have been using to gauge early childhood development for more than 20 years. Reach Out and Read, founded in 1989, gives children ages 6 months to 5 years a free book at their annual well-child visit and encourages their parents to read it aloud to them. Last year alone, per the organization, it reached 4.8 million kids and distributed 9 million books across the country — 445,000 of them in Pennsylvania.

The literacy crisis — a plummeting of average reading scores, a lack of reading comprehension among students and a drop in reading for pleasure — has flared in the last few years, as new research reveals that literacy and comprehension skills are declining among students. By one metric, a third of schoolchildren are below a basic reading level by fourth grade.

Reading aloud to a children not only improves literacy rates once they get to school but increases the likelihood they’ll report reading as their favorite activity. In a “State of Pennsylvania’s Babies” report from 2023, the state found that 42.3% of parents read to their babies daily.

“Reading is the phone. Reading is the laptop. You’re holding mom’s phone, and that’s not the same experience,” said Steve Wilmot, executive director of Reach Out and Read’s Pennsylvania affiliate chapter, which receives support from the national branch but manages individual sites within its region independently.

“It’s not the same bonding, and it’s not promoting the early relational health that comes about when you take the time to do that for your kids,” he said.

About half of U.S. states have program affiliates. Pennsylvania’s affiliate announced it was expanding in July to increase the number of participating clinics, especially in rural areas of the state. But Pittsburgh-area clinics have been ahead of the curve for years in adopting such programs compared to many other regions of Pennsylvania and other states.

Pittsburgh also has Reading Ready Pittsburgh, a Homestead-based nonprofit that connects kids to books and holds events, and the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, where parents can sign up to receive a free book every month. The subscription service wants to reach 14,000 Pittsburgh children and improve their literacy rates, even before they start school. In a social media video posted on June 22, Mayor Corey O’Connor said he enrolled his children.

For Bertenthal, adherence to and enthusiasm for the program are crucial. He was a first-grade teacher before he went to medical school — “so this program is near and dear to my heart.”

UPMC adopted Reach Out and Read in 2004 and now has books for children in 10 languages. The Oakland clinic has a large proportion of Spanish-speaking and Uzbek families, said Bertenthal. Other local adoptees include Allegheny Health Network pediatrics, Hilltop Community Healthcare Center, Squirrel Hill Health Center and some Primary Care Health Services locations.

It’s important for the books to be in the language of the patient and reflect their culture, Wilmot said, so kids can see themselves in the characters.

“To see the smile on the faces of kids who speak a different language when you show them a book in their language, it’s very nice to see that happen,” said Kristin Hannibal, a retired clinic director who helped bring Reach Out and Read to UPMC.

At first, doctors were simply giving the books to kids, but as time passed they saw the potential of using the book as a tool to teach families about early childhood development. Hannibal said she’s seen how these books can help children sit still, as they’re more distracted by devices than in previous years.

Bertenthal also sees books as an opportunity to talk about the importance of routines. He sent the Bezzou family home with dental floss and toothbrushes and encouraged Fares Bezzou, their girls’ father, to incorporate nighttime reading into that routine.

“This is a great way for Elena and Sabrina to develop their speech, to bond, and it’s a good bedtime activity,” he said.

Part of Wilmot’s new role as director of the Pennsylvania affiliate involves visiting each Reach Out and Read site in the commonwealth. Within the first year of his role, he said he’s made it through about half of the nearly 300 sites.

“I will tell you what, I just got to stand back and clap,” he said. “It was amazing. They are following the program with such fidelity.”

The next one to three years will be about growing the program further. He wants to focus on rural clinics that might not already be partnered with Reach Out and Read. He recently established a partnership with nine pediatric sites in Sharon, Pa., a town of 13,000 people near the Ohio border.

Wilmot has faith in the expansion. Before he took the job with the Pennsylvania affiliate program, he worked at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which had Reach Out and Read in 21 of its primary care locations.

“I saw it work there,” he said. “I saw magic.”