Tierney takes his turn reading to kids in Lynn

LYNN – Children involved in the Lynn Community Health Center WIC Nutrition program are used to volunteers reading in the waiting room, but families with an appointment received a special surprise Monday morning when Congressman John Tierney arrived to read in support of the Reach Out and Read (ROR) program.Doctors and medical staff at LCHC participate in the ROR program by sending patients home with new books with the hope parents will read to their children every day and get them started on the path toward a successful education.As part of the program, volunteers read to children in the waiting room every day, a task that Tierney took over for just less than an hour Monday.About two dozen children and parents surrounded the local congressman, who was in town for a series of appearances including an announcement on the Blue Line extension project.Tierney read several books to the attentive and curious children, including Goodnight Moon. He has been a staunch supporter of the program, which has gained broad bipartisan support in Congress, as a leading advocate in Washington for the program’s federal funding.”I commend the doctors, nurses and staff at the Lynn Community Health Center for their outstanding advocacy on behalf of children’s literacy,” he said. “Reading to infants, toddlers and young children every day is a critically important component of early childhood development and contributes greatly to a child’s ability to arrive at school ready to learn and achieve. Reach Out and Read distributes hundreds of thousands of books to children in our area each year in support of this worthy goal and I am proud to support this outstanding program.”Part of Tierney’s visit was also to support President Barack Obama, who has called on citizens to help in the community through selfless volunteering and committed millions to community health centers across the country through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”The president and Congress worked together on the ARRA and part of that is providing support for community health centers,” he said. “They are a big part of bringing health care to both rural and urban areas in our communities.”Lynn Community Health Center has been a part of the ROR program for 12 years and is one of nine sites in Tierney’s district to support the program. Since it was founded in 1989, ROR has trained more than 50,000 doctors and nurses who have given more than 20 million books to children in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The program serves about 25 percent of America’s at-risk infants, toddlers and preschoolers.”Reach out and Read not only provides parents with essential tools to help prepare their children for school, it also promotes a parent-child bonding that is so important during early childhood and is a very positive way of engaging the whole family during a visit with the primary care physician,” said LCHC Pediatric Team Leader Dr. Eileen Fisk. “Children have come to associate our practice with positive things – books and reading. This program has truly become part of our culture here at the Lynn Community Health Center and I can’t imagine our practice without it and I don’t think our families could either.”