Pediatric Associates started our own Reach out and Read Chapter in 2016. Thanks to generous donors in our community we have been able to provide new developmentally appropriate books at each well visit from ages 6 months to 5 years of age at all of our offices.  Reach Out and Read is a nonprofit national program that has been around since the early 1990s and their research demonstrates that starting at birth, reading with children puts them on a path to success.

What happens during the first few years sets the stage for the rest of a child’s life. Spending time together while reading aloud helps to create strong parent-child bonds and promotes healthy brain development. Children that are read to more often have improved language and listening skills, experience stronger emotional connections to their loved ones, and gain a lifelong love of reading.

• Families participating in Reach Out and Read read more frequently to their children.
• Children exposed to our program had higher receptive and expressive language scores.
• Increased exposure to Reach Out and Read led to larger increases in language scores.

Their body of independent, peer-reviewed, and published research supporting the efficacy of the Reach Out and Read model is more extensive than for any other psychosocial intervention in general pediatrics. You hopefully have had the experience of getting a new book for your child at one of their well visits with us and it is wonderful to see the joy children have when getting one of these book. It’s even more fun getting to choose one when they are old enough. On average we give out over 6000 books a year. We rely on generous donors in our community and as our practice grows our funding needs have grown as well. Click if you wish to donate to the Pediatric Associates of Charlottesville Reach Out and Read Program. Help us keep our program a success! All donations are tax deductable and will be used to purchase quality and diverse books for our patients.   For more info on the national Reach out and Read Program go to www.reachoutandread.org