Reach Out and Read

The Literacy Program at Camarena Health was implemented in 2002 with funding from Reach Out and Read and Reading is Fundamental. The program promotes early literacy to children 6 months to 5 years old, by providing anticipatory guidance to parents about early literacy and the importance of engaging their child by reading aloud, providing advice for parents, and giving a book to the child. Camarena Health provides a new free, developmentally and linguistically appropriate book to pediatric patients 6 months to 5 years old. The child receives a free book during their well-child visit and another book at any other clinic visit.

Our medical providers and medical assistants give advice to parents on how to engage the child and read aloud to them; or, in cases when the parent him/herself can’t read, they show them how to interact with the child holding the book and pointing at the pictures and making sounds to make it fun for the child, stressing the importance, developmentally, of early literacy.