ROR National Center Develops Spanish Language Reference Guide The Reach Out and Read National Center is pleased to announce the development of a new reference guide, Spanish Language Literacy Promotion for Pediatric Primary Care Providers. In its first edition, the guide is ROR's most comprehensive Spanish-language tool to date. Not a script, the guide contains Spanish words and phrases (and their English translation) that providers may find helpful in communicating early literacy guidance to their Spanish-speaking patients and their families. Developed as part of ROR's national Leyendo Juntos (Reading Together) initiative, the guide was created with input from bicultural/bilingual medical providers who have extensive experience with Latino families, as well as from focus group discussions with Latino parents of young children. The primary goal of Leyendo Juntos is to create materials and disseminate best practices to ROR Programs so that ROR providers can most effectively communicate the ROR message, in Spanish, to Latino families. Special appreciation goes to Dr. Mariana Glusman, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and Medical Director for ROR Illinois, for leading the effort on writing and editing this valuable new tool. 86 percent of ROR Programs nationwide report serving Latino children, and a recent study published in Maternal and Child Health Journal reports that children of Hispanic immigrants begin to fall behind their non-Hispanic counterparts in cognitive and linguistic development by age 2. Through the ROR model, medical providers are able to emphasize the importance of language, storytelling, and book-sharing to Latino families. As this is the first edition of this guide, we are looking for feedback, comments, and additional best practices that ROR providers have found to be effective when communicating the ROR message to Latino families. To access the guide online, click here. If you would like to receive a guide in the mail for your practice, please email programs.intern@reachoutandread.org and include your name, address, and ROR Site ID. We hope that this information is useful to ROR providers nationwide as you bring the important message of literacy promotion to the thousands of Latino patients that Reach Out and Read serves every day.   Return