Reach Out And Read
Reading aloud is the single most important thing parents can do to foster and maintain their child’s love of books.
Physicians use their unique and supportive relationship with parents to stress the benefits of reading aloud to their children and to encourage the family’s everyday interaction with books.
Reach Out and Read is a pediatric literacy program created in 1989 by a group of pediatricians and educators at Boston City Hospital to help curb illiteracy in Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. As an early affiliated site, Lynn Community Health Center launched its program in 1996 and is now one of the most vibrant Reach Out and Read programs nationwide.
Reach Out and Read integrates parent education about literacy and literacy development into routine pediatric care. A free, age-appropriate book is given out to children six months to five years of age at every pediatric check-up so that books (and sharing them together with parents and siblings) may become a routine part of family life for our patients.
Creating a Literacy Rich Environment
You can help support family literacy by helping us create waiting spaces for families that involve books and reading. There are two ways to help:
Volunteer:
Dedicate one or two hours a week to reading to children and giving away books in one of our many waiting rooms. You will not only be entertaining the children, but modeling interactive reading techniques for parents. After you finish the book, you can offer it to the child to take home for her own.
Donate Books:
Volunteers Lynn Community Health Center give over 6,000 gently used books to children every year. We are in constant need of gently used books for our waiting rooms! Collect books from your neighbors, do a book drive a work or school, or ask a local service organization to collect books for the health center.
Make a Donation:
Your support will ensure that each child receives a brand new book at his or her well child visit from six months to five years of age.
massmonopoly
Find A Doctor
Urgent Care
Request Appointment
Hours & Locations