P3.E081: “Turning Pages: Empowering Pediatric Residents and Nurturing Early Development”

Background: Reading to a child is an Early Relational Health tool that can be encouraged in the pediatric office at all visits. A growing body of evidence indicates that routines around spending time together and reading aloud has lasting impact far beyond language and early literacy. Reach Out and Read (ROR) is a national nonprofit that champions the positive effects of reading daily and is the only national pediatric literacy model endorsed by AAP with books distribution typically from age 6 months to 3 years. ROR recently updated their model to include implementation in the first four well-child visits starting from birth. Being a ROR site, we implemented this model in our ambulatory clinic. Through this study, our objective was to educate our pediatric residents on book distribution from birth and assess the benefits of book distribution to babies from 0-6 months as a tool for ERH and evaluate its impact on development compared to the traditional ROR model.

Project Description: All clinicians from our ambulatory clinic and participating residents took the “Building Connections Begins at Birth” training from ROR. We distributed a pre-survey to parents of babies 0-6 months prior to implementation of the new model. We educated Pediatric Residents through didactic sessions on the importance of ERH, ROR and book distribution during well child visits and started distributing books from birth.
After 6 months of implementing the new ROR model: 1) Looked at book distribution rate from the residents. 2) Collected post-surveys from families who had babies age 0-6 months and compared the responses from pre and post surveys. 3) Assessed the effects of book distribution at birth on developmental milestones by chart review of developmental screens of patients who received books from birth versus patients who received books after 6 months of age as per standard ROR protocol.

Discussion: More than 90% of the Pediatric Residents started giving out age appropriate books to the families, encouraging them to read to their children. Analysis of the pre and post surveys from families showed 74% increase in books received at visits, 29% increase in number of days they read to their children, 92% increase in interest to read/talk/sing to their child. Chart review showed significant improvement in development, pre-distribution 88% had a failed a developmental screen versus only 33% in post book distribution.

Conclusion: Books Beginning at Birth is a new model implemented by ROR in 2023. Educating Pediatric Residents on ROR programs and impact of reading to children on ERH will improve the quality of care delivered by our future Pediatricians. Books distributed at birth were welcomed by families, 92% of families plan to read/talk/sing more to their children as a routine and the study confirmed the positive impact on developmental milestones.