The Mississippi Children’s Museum is extending its work in early childhood education with a new partnership with the national Reach Out and Read nonprofit and the University of Mississippi Medical Center and its pediatric arm, Children’s of Mississippi.

“This partnership … means we can more effectively connect with our medical community, with our pediatricians, and with early childhood clinics around the state of Mississippi,” said Susan Garrard, president of Mississippi Children’s Museum, during a press conference held at MCM-Meridian on Wednesday to announce the partnership.

“We all have a mutual mission of improving language development in Mississippi, and we’re so excited for the future of this program,” she said.

A number of business and healthcare leaders, as well as early childhood and literacy advocates, turned out for the afternoon press conference.

“Reading is essential in the life of a child,” said John Anderson, president and CEO of Anderson Regional Health System. “The more a child is exposed to reading and singing and playing, the more advanced they become.”

Reach Out and Read is a national program that supports healthy early parent-child relationships through shared reading. During routine well-child visits, medical providers participating in the program discuss with parents and caregivers how to use books to engage with their infant or young child. The child is also given an age-appropriate book to take home at each well visit to encourage reading together as a family.

MCM, which already sponsors the Talk from the Start initiative, shares a similar mission.

By partnering with Reach Out and Read, MCM is continuing work started by the Mississippi Thrive initiative, started by UMMC and Children’s of Mississippi among other partners, to provide information and resources to improve the developmental health for children in Mississippi from birth through age 5.

“The brain is developing very rapidly in the first five years of life,” said Dr. Susan Buttross, a professor of pediatrics at UMMC.

As such, it is important for parents and caregivers to engage with children either by reading, talking and singing to them beginning at birth and to continuing as they age.

“I know it sounds simple, but it really is,” Buttross said.

Data has showed that children who are read to at an early age are more likely to become good readers, do better academically and become more robust workers in the long run, she said.

Buttross and fellow UMMC physician Dr. Ruth Patterson will serve as medical advisers and supporters of the Reach Out and Read program.

The national Reach Out and Read nonprofit is investing $15,000 to help get MCM’s new initiative up and going, which will go toward funding books and launching the program. Scholastic Books, which has partnered with Reach Out and Read for 34 years, is matching that investment and is donating an additional $15,000 in books, announced Judy Newman, chief impact officer for Scholastic.

“We don’t do this often, but we were so inspired by what we heard was going on down here,” she said.

So far, 30 pediatric clinics have signed up to participate in the new Reach Out and Read program with plans to extend the program to others clinics across the state, said Garrard, adding they are eagerly awaiting for clinics in east Mississippi to join.

Through this new program, MCM will be able to connect with these clinics to make sure they have easy access to age appropriate books to give out to children during their well visits and to make sure families realize how important it is to bond with their children through reading, she said.

“We would like to see parents and caregivers engaging with children, talking to children, reading to children, singing to children because that develops language, and language is the basis of literacy,” Garrard said. “Before a child learns to read, they learn to talk. They learn to communicate.”