What comes to your mind when you think about a doctor’s office waiting room? Outdated magazines? Clipboards with pages and pages of forms? How about what a homeless child thinks about? The uncertainty or anxiety about what’s going to happen there—when there’s already so much of that in their lives? Thanks to our partnership with Reach Out and Read, we are transforming the waiting rooms in our family health centers into engaging and inviting resource spaces, providing free, age-appropriate books for our youngest patients, alleviating some—if not exactly all—of that anxiety. The partnership has become an important tool in affirming for our patients experiencing homelessness, that health care can be a pleasant and empowering experience—for the whole family.
It was twenty seven years ago when two Boston Medical Center pediatricians realized their potential to have an impact on the youth they served by prescribing books to foster a language-rich interaction between parents and their children. Today, the organization has nearly 6,000 program sites nationwide, including seven Care for the Homeless (CFH) sites.
The Reach Out and Read program turns CFH’s traditional “waiting room” into a resource center, where patients—children and adults—can learn about and expand their health knowledge, eliminating the unproductive “waiting” part of getting high-quality health care. CFH has been a proud recipient of children’s books from Reach Out and Read for the past 18 months and we look forward to continuing this program to deliver client-centered health care to families and individuals experiencing homelessness.
To learn more about CFH’s Reach Out and Read program, click here.
