Ready and Healthy for Kindergarten is a Spanish/English multilingual family involvement program that is grounded in sociocultural and family literacy theories since it focuses on health and literacy development. The program’s development reflects a collaborative partnership of teachers, pediatricians, families, and an advisory board of multilingual parents dedicated to preparing preschoolers and their families for kindergarten. Health themes are presented to introduce foundational literacy and social-emotional skills, and the program comprises eight one-hour virtual sessions intended to engage both children and their families through active participation in learning. The program highlights how parents, educators, and pediatricians can come together to align their expertise and impact family knowledge around child development needs. With this strong collaboration when designing and implementing the Ready and Healthy for Kindergarten program, we were able to successfully provide guidance and support for families, which helped them to establish routines that promote health and well-being, along with some literacy skills.

Background: Early childhood interventions can simultaneously promote positive health and early language experiences, but implementation and health equity often receive insufficient attention during the development process. Objective: We apply a health equity lens to refine and pilot-test a family literacy and wellness program designed for Latino dual language learners (DLLs) entering kindergarten and their caregivers. Methods: In collaboration with a parent and community advisory board, we refined an 8-week family literacy and wellness program and conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a waitlist control. The program, specifically designed by our interprofessional team for Latino DLLs, uses health topics (ie, nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and social-emotional development) to (1) introduce foundational language and literacy skills to children; (2) empower families to engage in health and home literacy activities using a strengths-based approach; and (3) encourage maintenance of families’ home language. We assessed reach by collecting sociodemographic information; attendance and acceptability using a parent survey; and preliminary effects on home literacy activities through a validated parent-report instrument (StimQ₂ quantity, quality, content, and concepts subdomains) and on child literacy skills using investigator-developed assessments. We analyzed quantitative data using descriptive statistics and regression analyses. Results: Parents and community advisors informed the program content. A total of 32 parent-child dyads were enrolled in the pilot RCT. All parents identified as Latino, and half had not completed high school, indicating that we reached the intended audience. Parents rated the program as highly acceptable, and 23 (72%) participants attended at least half of the sessions. After participation, group 1 had higher StimQ₂ quality scores (effect size 0.99, P=.02) and higher quantity scores (effect size 1.01, P=.04) compared with group 2. Conclusions: Similar interprofessional collaborations may be a promising strategy to promote equity in early language experiences for Latino DLLs and their families.