Hospital kicks off book drive

by Carol Crump
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 9:21 AM MDT

Could reading “The Cat in the Hat” or “The Velveteen Rabbit” mean better health for Casper’s children?

The Wyoming Medical Center hopes so. The community hospital’s “Books at the Bedside” book drive is a new initiative to encourage literacy.

The thrust of the program is to make sure any child who receives care at the WMC in either the emergency department or as a pediatric patient has a book to read. The books, which the children will take home as their own, will come from community donations of new children’s books.

WMC Public Relations and Marketing Representative Shauna VanderLinden wanted to do something for the 12,000 children who are patients at WMC each year. Her first thought for a story hour in the pediatric unit was logistically impossible, but the idea of tying healthcare to reading was still where she wanted to go.

During her research, the young mother was “shocked” to learn what literacy can mean to a person in relation to his or her health and life choices. One in four children in the U.S. grows up not knowing how to read and 43 percent of adults at the lowest literacy level live in poverty.

When it comes to their health, low literacy is associated with poor understanding of written or spoken medical advice and poor health decisions, VanderLinden said in a news release.

“Eighty-five percent of the juveniles in the criminal justice system are functionally illiterate,” she said. “If we can just do one small step, get them reading while they’re in the hospital and have nothing else to do.

“If they can’t read what’s on a medicine bottle, how can they take it properly?”

The “Books at the Beside” book drive is for new children’s books for all ages up to age 18. VanderLinden expects gathering books for 13- to 15-year-olds will be the most difficult, but “you never know what to expect when you’re starting something new.”

She is pushing for new or “like new” books with no writing in them or tears so that the children who are given the books can take ownership. Wal-Mart East kicked off the drive with a donation of $100 that VanderLinden turned into 30 new books. Other cash donations also are welcome.

The book collection drive initially will run through the end of July. There is an opportunity to continue the effort for a longer period of time if the donations continue to go well.

A collection box at the Casper Recreation Center overflowed into a second box in just two days. All of the books -- about 100 so far -- are stacked for now in VanderLinden’s office at the WMC.

“Only 11,900 more to go,” she said.

Collection sites for the “Books at the Bedside” book drive are located at the South Link Information Desk at the main entrance or the ER registration desk at the WMC. Books also are being collected at the Casper Recreation Center.

For information, call VanderLinden at 577-2536.

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