Pediatrician Dr. Genna Ableman juggles the usual clinical tasks at every wellness visit: measuring a child’s vitals, administering vaccines and talking about nutrition. But she also makes time for what she says is one of the most critical ways to improve a child’s health: reading.
Ableman, director of population health at the community-based medical center Settlement Health in East Harlem, runs an early child literacy program aimed at improving reading levels among her patients. The clinic gives out books to children under 5 years old and encourages parents to read at home.
“That’s what you do when you work at a community health center,” Ableman said. “I often say that I focus on the social aspects of kids’ lives more than just straight medicine.”
More pediatricians have begun to use literacy to assess kids’ health in the past decade. Research shows that reading to younger kids can reduce the likelihood of poverty and stress later on in life, prompting leading medical group the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend last September that doctors counsel parents to read aloud to their kids as early as infancy.
Ableman, the child of two educators, grew up in Sheepshead Bay surrounded by books, prompting her to merge her interests in literacy and health care when she was a medical student. She joined the Reach Out and Read program at New York City Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Hospital early in medical school, not only encouraging children and families to read, but also providing health literacy guidance to parents that helped them understand medication labels and navigate the health care system.
“I knew it was something I wanted to bring wherever I worked,” Ableman said.
Ableman joined Settlement Health in 2016 and quickly became the associate medical director of a residency program that trains early-career doctors from Mount Sinai. Her residents already participated in a Reach Out and Read program, but they wanted to grow literacy work at Settlement Health.
In 2022 Ableman partnered with the United Hospital Fund on its early child literacy program to build up reading resources for the approximately 1,600 younger patients at the clinic. Settlement Health received a $7,500 grant to equip its waiting room with culturally appropriate books and mini reading couches, hold book drives and develop tools for parents. The clinic hands out bookmarks to families that list common literacy milestones for kids, including when they might be able to flip the pages of a book on their own or say certain words.
Although a lot of Ableman’s work has focused on literacy among her youngest patients, she tries to set the stage for older kids and teens too. Settlement Health, a federally qualified health center, primarily serves families from low-income households and people of color, and Ableman tries to give out books that reflect kids’ race, religion, sexuality or culture.
Ableman says reading can become a refuge for her patients, especially kids who experience at-home stressors or trauma.
“They are able – through books and libraries – to get out of that mindset and explore other cultures, ideas and experiences,” Ableman said. “They can be an architect; they can be a doctor. They may not be seeing that in their everyday life.”
