We know that learning begins at birth, and that healthy development improves children’s ability to learn. Children who are on track in their physical, social and emotional, cognitive and verbal development are more successful learners from their earliest years, and they are more likely to become proficient readers.

We also know that at every age and every stage of development, children from low-income families often receive less, and lower-quality, health care and services. As a result, they are more likely to have:

• Higher rates of developmental delays and disabilities related to learning, which affect their school readiness;
• Higher rates of asthma and dental disease that affect their school attendance; and
• Fewer opportunities for high-quality nutrition especially during the summer. Since poor nutrition affects learning, such missed opportunities can contribute to summer learning loss.

These health disparities—differences in health that favor children from more affluent families—are reflected in lower levels of reading proficiency for children from low-income families. Unless we turn around these disparities, we won’t close the reading gap that begins in the early grades and sets students up for academic difficulty and dropping out of high school.

The Healthy Readers initiative of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading focuses on strategies to ensure that children from low-income families are in good health and developing on track at four key milestones in their development from birth through third grade: Born Healthy, Thriving at Three, Ready at Five, and Present and Engaged in the Early Grades.

Today, we’re releasing a series of Resource Guides called Growing Healthy Readers: Taking Action to Support the Health Determinants of Early School Success. These guides will help communities and state-level coalitions identify priority issues that affect children’s health and determine how to take action. They include the research, successful strategies and case studies from communities that are improving children’s health and reading success. These issues include:

1. Prenatal Care and Infant Development

• Resource Guide: Supporting Healthy Births and Infancy

2. Comprehensive Screenings, Follow-Up and Early Intervention

• Resource Guide: Ensuring Early and Appropriate Screenings and Intervention
• Resource Guide: Supporting Children’s Healthy Social-Emotional Development

3. Oral Health

• Resource Guide: Ensuring Oral Health

4. Asthma Management

• Resource Guide: Controlling Environments and Managing Asthma

5. Nutrition and Physical Activity

• Resource Guide: Promoting Healthy Food Choices
• Resource Guide: Increasing Physical Activity

                   Improving health and learning for children from low-income families is important work, but it need not be daunting. In Baltimore, for instance, an intensive home-visiting program is reducing the rate of infant deaths and teaching new parents how to prepare their babies for a lifetime of reading. In Columbus, Ohio, a community health screening program is identifying developmental delays before children start school and working with families to address these needs.

To get started, local coalitions  can consult available data and gather information to help them determine which priorities to address to improve children’s health and learning.  The Resource Guides contain valuable information and recommendations about how to proceed.

No matter which strategies a community coalition undertakes, it is useful to begin by including people who are knowledgeable about children’s health, such as representatives from Head Start, pediatricians, the Health Department, and a Federally-Qualified Health Center.  These individuals can help stakeholders understand the issues and reach out to others who can support the work.