[Promoting early reading in a social exclusion district in primary care]

Reading is a tool that stimulates brain activity, increasing its cognitive reserve and providing innumerable benefits such as the stimulation of empathy, concentration or language development. Promoting reading at a very early age helps develop reading skills correctly. However, social inequalities can result in this practice being carried out less in groups of low socioeconomic, social or cultural levels. The purpose of this study was to assess the outcomes of a promoting reading habits intervention in a primary health care center located in a social transformation district by talking to the parents, providing books to families and encouraging books to become a part of children's play preferences.

A non-random intervention study in which children born in 2015 and registered in a particular health center took part. A reading promotion intervention was carried out at the ages of 4, 6, 12 and 18 months and at 24 months their preference for reading activities was assessed in relation to other leisure activities.

Three hundred forty-two subjects were included, 154 allocated in the intervention group and 188 in the control group. The children in the intervention group exhibited a greater preference for reading as a leisure activity as compared to those in the control group (reading ranked in last position of favourite activities in 18.8 vs. 33.9%; p=0.003). The variables found on multivariate analysis to have a greater influence on reading position in the ranking of favorite activities were not having participated in the intervention OR: 2.06 (1.19-3.58) and gipsy ethnicity, OR: 2.37 (1.38-4.09).

Results reveal a slight improvement in the preference for reading as an activity in the children that took part in the literacy program.