Unlike traditional childhood literacy programs, the objective of the Reach Out and Read model is to deliver specialized early literacy counseling and support. Reach Out and Read achieves this by taking advantage of the unique access that pediatric primary care providers have to children while they are in their critical years of cognitive and language development – six months through five years old. Three program components complement and reinforce one another:

• At each well-child visit from six months through five years, children receive a new, developmentally and culturally appropriate children's book from medical providers. By the time they begin school, children acquire a home library of at least 10 beautiful children's books.
• In the examination room, physicians and nurse practitioners offer parents tips and age-appropriate advice about the importance of reading with their young children, including materials to take home.
• Volunteers read stories and look at books with children in clinic waiting rooms, thereby modeling for the parents reading aloud techniques.

Pediatricians and early childhood specialists founded Reach Out and Read in 1989 at Boston City Hospital, now a part of Boston Medical Center. Reach Out and Read of Greater New York was later launched as a separate agency in New York City in 1997 (incorporated in 1999).

The role of Reach Out and Read of Greater New York as a coalition office is to:

• Recruit and train new member Reach Out and Read program sites.
• Encourage partnerships with local corporations, foundations, and community organizations to sponsor Reach Out and Read of Greater New York activities.
• Obtain funding and other resources, including book donations, to assist Reach Out and Read program sites with becoming self sustaining.
• Provide volunteer opportunities.
• Collaborate with other community-based literacy programs to promote interest and awareness about the importance of early exposure to books and the enjoyment that reading can bring.
• Participate in collaborative research on the effects of early pediatric literacy intervention.

• 181 Reach Out and Read programs

• 265,000 children served each year

• 5,400 medical providers trained

• 423,000 books distributed in the last year

• Hundreds of volunteers recruited who bring books to children everyday