Your prescription: Read a book and call me in the morning

A child who is not read to enters kindergarten having heard 30 million fewer spoken words than his classmates. He will be less likely to identify letters, slower to learn to read and more likely to be grade levels behind by third grade.

Years later, that child will be more likely to have health problems than his classmate who entered kindergarten having been read to.

And that is something the medical community needs to deal with.

All of that according to Dipesh Navsaria, a Wisconsin pediatrician who was in Bradenton on Friday to help promote Reach Out and Read, a new initiative coming to Manatee and Sarasota that will equip doctors to dispense books and teach parents the importance of reading to their children.

“The single biggest challenge (for pediatricians) is what’s going on between the child’s ears,” said Navsaria, the founding medical director of Reach Out and Read in Wisconsin. “The biggest indicator of lifelong health is not diet or exercise — it’s education.”

Reach Out and Read’s presence in Manatee County will mean pediatricians serving primarily low-income communities will receive roughly 10,000 books to distribute annually. Those doctors are the best people to serve as the purveyors of books, Navsaria said. Nearly every parent, rich or poor, brings their child to the doctor, and doctors are viewed as trusted authorities.

Navsaria said if a child’s brain is not stimulated during the first years of life, the child will have a hard time recovering.

“There is no prescription I can write for a medication that’s going to make this better,” Navsaria said. “The best bang for your buck is in early childhood and prenatal (services).”

That is why the new program is so essential, said Bronwyn Beightol, the chief operating officer of the United Way of Manatee County. Beightol said the initiative will address a gap in community services — while there are several programs for school-aged children, learning begins at birth, and there are far fewer resources for children between the age of birth and three.

“Being able to do something for those kids in the zero-to-3 no-man’s land appealed to us,” said Beightol. “You really need to harness the power of parents as those brain builders. We are getting children at earliest possible moment for educational success.”

The United Way of Manatee County, the lead organization for the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, is working with the Manatee Community Foundation, The Patterson Foundation and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to sponsor Reach Out and Read. The consortium will fund the project for the first three years, and then they hope to turn it over to the community.

Reach Out and Read is working with pediatricians at the following Manatee County locations: Lawton Chiles Health Center, Edgar H. Price Jr. Family and Children Healthcare Center, Whole Child Pediatrics, Manatee Pediatrics and Arcadia Pediatrics.

This story was originally published February 24, 2017 at 4:58 PM with the headline "Your prescription: Read a book and call me in the morning."