Reach Out and Read prepares Colorado�s youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with doctors to prescribe books and encourage families to read together.

Impact Summary from the Nonprofit The focus of the unique, evidence-based Reach Out and Read program is two-fold. First, the program targets low-income children aged six months to five years. Reach Out and Read is the only program in Colorado capable of reaching nearly all children in this demographic due to its partnerships with health clinics: the setting where low-income children most frequently come in contact with a formal service system. Second, the program focuses on impacting the parents of these children, who often are unaware of the value and importance of reading at an early age.Reach Out and Read is based on a very simple, inexpensive yet highly effective and research based operating model. The three components of the program model are:1)Doctors and medical providers give new books to children ages 6 months through 5 years at each well-child visit. Children keep these books at no cost to the family.2)Doctors advise parents on the importance of reading aloud, and provide them with literacy strategies for all developmental stages during the well-child exam. Doctors engage parents by sharing what children of different ages will do with books: infants explore their world orally and will chew on books, while parents of toddlers are encouraged to create a back-and-forth dialogue around the words and the images.3)Families make reading part of their daily routine. Research shows our families read up to 350 hours with their children prior to kindergarten. The Reach Out and Read program was included in the Campaign for Grade Level Reading as a successful evidenced-based model to help close the �readiness gap,� a disparity in the level of school preparation seen in children from low-income families.Reach Out and Read Colorado now distributes 157,000 books annually to 86,000 children annually while providing the family with a "reading prescription".Reach Out and Read Colorado plans to expand the program to serve an additional 10,000 children in 2013.