Evaluation of Reach Out and Read Colorado’s Birth to Six Months Pilot Initiative
Prepared for Reach out and Read Colorado in 2019
Reach Out and Read Colorado seeks to educate caregivers about the importance of reading to their children by 1) providing books to children at pediatric checkups from six months to five years old and 2) training medical providers to encourage families to read aloud to their children to develop early literacy skills and help prepare them to enter school ready to succeed.
Reach Out and Read Colorado program leadership considered expanding the program to include earlier intervention, at pediatric checkups before six months old, to convey to caregivers that “right from birth, babies are listening, looking, and learning, so they should find –and enjoy – these everyday moments when they can talk, read, sing, and play together with their baby.”
To explore the feasibility of this expansion, Reach Out and Read Colorado selected six clinic sites to participate in this pilot effort and an associated evaluation. Four of the sites piloted the intervention at two different dosage levels, and the remaining two clinic sites served as a control group.
Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) partnered with Reach Out and Read Colorado to complete the evaluation of this birth-6 months intervention pilot effort. This evaluation of the pilot of earlier intervention focused on understanding:
Program Implementation: the efficacy of the training developed for this pilot and clinic satisfaction with the new interventions by surveying medical providers at participating clinics. Caregivers were also surveyed to measure implementation fidelity (receiving guidance and/or books).
Program Impact: reported caregiver behavioral changes related to engagement and reading habits with their infant as reported by caregivers through pre- and post-treatment surveys.