Read All About It! Free books for Asbury Park youngsters
By TOM SHORTELL
 Coaster Photo: Sen. Sean Kean reads Farmer Freds Baby Animals to students from Asbury Parks Little Tots Pre-school. |
The HealthCare Institute of New Jersey delivered 3,500 books to area health centers and committed $100,000 to a national reading program recently.
Former New Jersey Representative Bob Franks, now president of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey, said at a press conference in Asbury Park the money would go toward creating a full-time staff for the Reach Out and Read program in New Jersey as well as expand the program to new sites and purchase new books. The HINJ is the trade association of pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey.
We thought it was a great partnership, Franks said of HINJs work with the literacy program.
The Reach Out and Read program promotes literacy by giving doctors and healthcare providers age-appropriate books that will than be passed along to parents and children. Research shows that children whose parents read to them regularly before kindergarten do better in language development, leading to more success at school. The program focuses on families at or near the poverty line, which studies show, are less likely to read to children.
Franks was in attendence with Lucille Davy, commissioner of education, Sen. Sean Kean and Assemblyman Dave Rible at the Visiting Nurses Association of the Central Jersey Community Health Center in Asbury Park. Davy, Kean and Rible read books to students of Little Tots Pre-School.
We need to encourage what the pharmaceutical companies are doing today, Rible said. A good education starts at home.
 Coaster Photo: Assemblyman Dave Rible speaks with children at the Visiting Nurses Association of the Central Jersey Community Health Center in Asbury Park. |
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