MUSKEGON HEIGHTS – Muskegon Family Care recently received a shipment of over 3,000 books from First Book National Book Bank, an organization devoted to distributing new publisher-donated books to organizations serving children from low-income families, as an effort to increase literacy levels in the community. What better place to offer books than in a community health center? This effort complements the clinic’s Reach Out and Read program, which targets children from 6 months of age up to 5 years and offers them books during their well-child visits with medical providers. Through primary care, we can offer the resources to improve literacy to our adult patients as well as early intervention to the children we serve. 

“Muskegon Family Care wants to provide new books to children in need, addressing several important factors affecting literacy – ready access to books and the habit of reading at home,” says Jami Bollenbach, AmeriCorps member who currently manages the Reach Out and Read program. Bollenbach notes that providers in the center are trained in Reach Out and Read early literacy intervention which has been shown to improve literacy rates.