Reach Out and Read Literacy Program for Infants in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit - a Pre-post Experimental Study

Background: Prevalence of NICU admission is 44% in India. NICU stay is a precursor of various complications faced later in life. Language developmental delay is one of the complications of NICU stay with a prevalence ranging from 2.3% to 19% in Indian population. Elevated prevalence of linguistic delay in youngsters emphasizes the necessity to focus on language development in initial years to minimize the possibility of ill-effects and thus give optimal the chance for improvement. Aim: To evaluate effectiveness of Reach Out and Read intervention on language development for infants in NICU. Method: Single group pre-post assessment was carried out with 18 infants recruited from NICU. Reach Out and Read program was taught to parents of the recruited participants. Parents were given one book every follow up till the infant was 5months of age. At recruitment and CA 3 months GMA was recorded. At CA 5 months BSID III language subtest was noted. Results: GMA at recruitment and 5 th month comparison shows significant improvement p=0.0277, GMA at 3 rd month compared to 5 th month shows significant improvement p=0.0431. Conclusion: Reach Out and Read literacy program improves GMs of infants from birth to CA 5 months of age. It looks to be a viable and promising new language intervention. A RCT needed to evaluate and generalize if ROR can help these infant’s language development.