A North Carolina hospital is reading to their tiniest patients. Here’s why.

In September 2023, the staff and patient families of the Clarke Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst, N.C. took part in a friendly competition to see who could read the most to their patients.

The annual read-a-thon event, which took place Sept. 11-21 and coincided with NICU Awareness Month and National Literacy Month, is intended to promote infant brain development, fosters family bonding, and decreases infant and parental stress related to intensive care hospitalization. Last year, more than 154 NICUs across the country participated, and there was a total of 31,879 reading sessions over the 11-day period.

As part of the program, each baby’s family in the FirstHealth NICU was gifted a book and information on the importance of reading. To learn more about the benefits of reading to premature babies directly from FirstHealth neonatologists, read this news story from FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.