As members of Reach Out and Read Colorado’s Provider Advisory Board (PAB), we are fully committed to creating a foundation of success for young children by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together. Our board represents a variety of healthcare practices and geographic regions in Colorado. Spanning from Glenwood Springs to Fort Morgan, our experience as active Reach Out and Read Colorado healthcare providers helps us work strategically with staff to strengthen impact across Colorado. As a group with varying backgrounds – pediatricians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants – we provide insight and perspective for continued program implementation. We proudly share some highlights from our first year together:

The Provider Advisory Board played a pivotal role in helping establish The Giving Tree Fund criteria, a scholarship fund to help support Reach Out and Read Colorado’s efforts to offer the program in every pediatric healthcare setting in the state.

In partnership with RORCO’s Medical Director and Program Director, the PAB helped to refine the metric by which RORCO defines need, which we believe must be more broadly inclusive. As a result, when considering a clinic’s application, RORCO now looks at community needs, community employers, free and reduced lunch data, and qualitative notes provided by the site instead of simply the percentage of participants in subsidized health care programs.

Last year we began exploring the importance of diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) books and the immense value these books provide as both mirrors and windows for children of all backgrounds. The PAB drafted a statement in support of a DEI books initiative and presented it to Medical Champions at all RORCO partner clinics across Colorado to urge clinics to focus on this DEI effort in their community.

The PAB has also developed a RORCO training for first year medical students that highlights the research behind the ROR model and its impact on young children. All first year medical students at Denver Health, regardless of their future specialty, received the training. We hope to expand this initiative to all medical students in Colorado in the coming years.

Our group serves as a sounding board for timely topics and questions from Reach Out and Read Colorado staff, especially relating to the Back to Birth initiative and their efforts to better measure and articulate impact for funders and providers. We play an active role in sharing the early relationship health benefits of the ROR program at our clinics and within our community.

Looking forward, we will continue to support RORCO’s initiatives to ensure that high-quality DEI books are accessible to all families, increase our presence with medical students, and provide insight to help inform future expansion, all while pursuing greater geographic diversity within our members to increase the rural clinic voice. If you or someone you know may be interested in joining the PAB, please reach out to Director of Programs, Jessie Chase, at [email protected].

We stand behind the mission of Reach Out and Read Colorado, now more than ever. As healthcare providers working with children and their families on a daily basis, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to promote early literacy and the benefits of reading together as a family from day one.