Dr Seuss teams with Kaiser Permanente MD's: read, read

There were no green eggs and ham, but trays of fruit-and-veggie kid-safe skewers and huge smiles on the faces of all the medical people (wearing “Cat-in-the-Hat” hats) at the Kaiser Permanente San Leandro Medical Center.
It was Read Across America a Day in honor of Dr. Seuss, and this new hospital was kicking off Kaiser Permanente’s model of the Reach Out And Read Program. But first, medical people and local officials got to read Dr. Seuss “Oh the Places You’ll Go” to assembled children in the Pediatrics waiting room.
“Hitting the rhymes is the most important part,” smiled Dr. Robert Greenberg, Kaiser Permanente San Leandro Physician-in-Chief and sporting a floppy red-striped stovepipe hat.
Kaiser Permanente was the first major health system to adopt the national pediatric Reach Out and Read program, 500 Kaiser Permanente pediatricians at 56 clinics are encouraging parents to read aloud to their youngest children, to encourage a love of reading.
“I read to my children, who are now adults, and now I’m going to read to my first grandbaby,” said Lydia Benjamin-Ajani, a nurse in Kaiser Permanente Employee Health, after a particularly dramatic and animated reading of “Oh the Places You’ll Go” to a group of young patients. From a wicker basket, she handed out a supply of new early reading books.
In 2015, an estimated 230,000 age-and-culturally-appropriate books will be handed out to Kaiser Permanente’s youngest patients. At every well-baby and well-child visit, children ages 6 months to 5 years receive a new book from their Kaiser Permanente physician.
San Leandro’s Mayor Pauline Cutter came by to read and led the children in some foot-stamping reading Seuss lines like ‘Things may happen and often do/To people as brainy and footsy as you’.
“I was a pre-school teacher for 23 years,” said Mayor Cutter, “and sometimes I miss reading to the kids.”
Also reading Seuss was San Leandro Unified Schools President Diana Prola. The Pediatrics Department waiting room was filled with Dr. Seuss posters and coloring pictures. Dr Greenberg, an emergency department physician, spent some time discussing the finer points of some animal picture books with several young patients.
And many of the young patients, waiting for their appointment at Kaiser Permanente San Leandro, were reading.
Or, as Dr. Seuss says, “You’ll find magic wherever you look/Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”