Pediatrician Elizabeth Worley knows how important a 4-year-old check-up can be for her patients at NYC Health + Hospitals/ Jacobi. Not only are these visits the occasion for critical immunizations, but they are typically the last time children and their parents will see the doctor before they start kindergarten.
“Parents come ready to learn and full of questions about discipline, sleep, school readiness—everything medical as well as the more social-emotional pieces,” said Dr. Worley, an attending physician at Jacobi’s pediatric ambulatory clinic. “Pediatricians are uniquely well-placed to give our anticipatory guidance.”
In 2023, thanks to a United Hospital Fund project, Dr. Worley’s clinic started offering parents a leg up at these 4-year-old checkups in a crucial part of school readiness: early childhood literacy. One of five participants in the second year of UHF’s project, “Pediatric Steps to Literacy, One Book at a Time,” Jacobi’s pediatric clinic received guidance, resource connections, a donation of books, and $7,500 in funding to fully integrate early literacy practices into their primary care space.
For Dr. Worley, these resources offered the opportunity to develop a program specifically tailored to the 4-year-old visit. Called “Hello, Bronx Reader,” the new program focused on helping 4-year-olds recognize letters and their associated sounds, a skill that increases their likelihood to succeed academically when entering kindergarten.
To help families reach this goal, Dr. Worley and her team used the UHF contributions and other fundraising to buy 725 backpacks and fill them with pro-literacy tools, including bathtub foam letters, a wooden alphabet puzzle, a small two-sided whiteboard, letter books, and dry erase pens. The backpacks would be distributed at each 4-year-old visit over the next year.
And, perhaps even more essential, staff handing out the backpacks were trained to counsel each family about the importance of literacy and school readiness.
“A lot of our parents did not grow up in families with parents who read to them as children, and [they] don't understand the importance or correlation between literacy-rich environments, reading, and later school success,” Dr. Worley said. Many families at Jacobi’s pediatric clinic, which serves the Bronx, live near or below the poverty line and face a myriad of other challenges that can lead to poor health outcomes.
“Parents want to do the best thing for their children, so modeling that behavior in a clinical setting is terrific,” Dr. Worley continued.
Dr. Worley and her team—including a group of high school volunteers led by Dr. Worley’s kids—finished assembling and delivering the backpacks to Jacobi’s pediatric clinic in late December 2023. So far, they have distributed about a third to 4-year-old patients and their families, with encouraging feedback.
“People are thrilled,” Dr. Worley said, noting that Jacobi will continue the distribution in future years should fundraising allow.
The new backpacks are part of a larger literacy effort at Jacobi, which is also a Reach Out and Read site. Dr. Worley, the director of Jacobi’s Reach Out and Read program, said the UHF project helped spur library card sign-up events and the donation of additional literacy kits from the New York Public Library.
“I would never have undertaken this project without UHF’s support,” Dr. Worley said. “We’re very grateful it was available.”
UHF’s early childhood literacy project is funded by the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation with additional support from Howard P. Milstein. Now in its third year, the project aims to ensure that children in at-risk communities develop proficient literacy skills and become lifelong learners poised for success.