Growing Healthy Readers: Taking Action to Help Kids Start Out Healthy

The Cam­paign for Grade-lev­el Read­ing today released a series of resource guides ded­i­cat­ed to the con­nec­tion between health and learn­ing in the ear­ly years. The series, enti­tled Grow­ing Healthy Read­ers: Tak­ing Action to Sup­port the Health Deter­mi­nants of Ear­ly School Suc­cess, incor­po­rates chil­dren’s health and learn­ing pri­or­ties into action plans for improv­ing school readi­ness, school atten­dance and sum­mer learn­ing. Each guide includes research doc­u­ment­ing the effects on learn­ing, strate­gies for improv­ing out­comes and case stud­ies of effec­tive local programs. 

The research team iden­ti­fied five chil­dren’s health and learn­ing pri­or­ties that most effect ear­ly learn­ing, and devel­oped sev­en resource guides to help com­mu­ni­ties address those pri­or­i­ties. These issues include: pre­na­tal care and infant devel­op­ment; com­pre­hen­sive screen­ings, fol­low-up and ear­ly inter­ven­tion; oral health; asth­ma man­age­ment; and nutri­tion and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. They found that chil­dren who are on track in their phys­i­cal, social and emo­tion­al devel­op­ment are more like­ly to become pro­fi­cient readers.

These resource guides were devel­oped to help com­mu­ni­ties and states take action on issues that affect chil­dren’s health and learning:

• Sup­port­ing Healthy Births and Infancy
• Ensur­ing Ear­ly and Appro­pri­ate Screen­ings and Intervention
• Sup­port­ing Chil­dren’s Healthy Social-Emo­tion­al Development
• Ensur­ing Oral Health
• Con­trol­ling Envi­ron­ments and Man­ag­ing Asthma
• Pro­mot­ing Healthy Food Choices
• Increas­ing Phys­i­cal Activity