Link to August 12 New York Times article, "Eat an Apple (Doctor's Orders)".
Excerpt: Doctors at three health centers in Massachusetts have begun advising patients to eat “prescription produce” from local farmers’ markets, in an effort to fight obesity in children of low-income families. Now they will give coupons amounting to $1 a day for each member of a patient’s family to promote healthy meals.
“A lot of these kids have a very limited range of fruits and vegetables that are acceptable and familiar to them. Potentially, they will try more,” said Dr. Suki Tepperberg, a family physician at Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, one of the program sites. “The goal is to get them to increase their consumption of fruit and vegetables by one serving a day.”
Retiring Guy figured --correctly -- that some type of 'prescription for reading' program is in place.
From the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Studies newsroom.
AND
Link to February-March 2003 Reading Today article excerpt, "Prescription for Early Reading: Reach out and Read Program Enlists Pediatricians to Encourage Parents to Read to Young Children."
Excerpt: This prescription for reading is being dispensed by an ever-increasing number of doctors' offices across the United States. Reach Out and Read (ROR) programs currently serve 1.5 million children each year and distribute 3 million free books.
ROR now operates at more than 1.400 clinics, hospitals, office practices, or other primary care sites in all 50 states, and more than 14,000 pediatricians, nurses, and other clinicians have been trained in the ROR strategies of early literacy. The program serves all kinds of people, but focuses on reaching families living in poverty.
The Reach Out and Read program began as a collaboration between pediatricians and early childhood educators at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center) in 1989. Since then the program, which is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has grown steadily.
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