Recognizing the ongoing disparity in educational performance across race and income levels, ReachUp USA adopts an innovative approach impelled by the truth that positive intervention at an early stage in a child’s development delivers the highest returns.

Building upon Reach Up and Learn – a model developed more than 25 years ago at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica – ReachUp provides weekly home visits by trained community health workers to bolster parenting techniques and to support a child’s cognitive and emotional progress.

Reach Up and Learn’s outcomes are more than encouraging, with the participants displaying improved skills, greater educational attainment and higher earnings. New Jersey serves as the entry point for ReachUp in this nation, as the project emerges from Princeton University and begins its implementation in Trenton.

Joining New Start New Jersey for this discussion of ReachUp is Dr. Thomas Espenshade, Senior Scholar, Lecturer and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, and Dr. Susan Walker, Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute at the University of the West Indies.