Reach Out And Read Literacy Programme on Language Development in Infants A Randomized Controlled Trial

•In children Speech and language development is a dynamic process and is one of the most useful pointers for children’s cognitive development, schooling, and academic achievement.

•In developed countries, Parents are most likely to raise speech and language delay (0-6 months) concerns in their encounters with primary care clinicians. In developing countries, parents usually raise concerns during the well-baby visits, when there are no verbalisations by the age of 1 year, if speech is unclear, or if speech or language is different from that of other children of the same age.

•Speech and language delay concerns are usually raised by the parent, So, parent questionnaires and parent concerns are often used to detect delay.

•A study was conducted in Tamil Nadu, India on children (0-3 years)  attending well-baby clinics, which reported that the prevalence of language delay using the Language Evaluation Scale Trivandrum(LEST) is  20% in infants aged 0–6 months to 59.5% in those aged 7–12 months.

•Most of the studies on language development have been conducted in developed countries and have emphasised the need to target language delay in early years. In India, majorly the studies have examined the prevalence or correlates of language delay in young children. However, there is a paucity of literature on early interventions to enhance infant language development.

•A clinic-based literacy intervention Reach Out and Read (ROR) programmed on preschoolers in India, reported that parents and kids who received the literacy intervention significantly improved their children’s reading behaviour, and proposed that it is crucial to invest in early language programs, to ensure that every child has the opportunity to thrive.