Gilchrist Award 2020 Winner: Dr. Tom Schreiner

We're proud to share that the Dr. Tom Schreiner, medical director for the White Earth Health Center on the White Earth Indian Reservation, is the inaugural winner of the Gerald Gilchrist Medical Champion Award. The award was created this year to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Gerry Gilchrist, a longtime advocate for children's developmental health and early supporter of Reach Out and Read Minnesota. With this award, Reach Out and Read Minnesota seeks to honor exceptional health care providers that go above and beyond to foster children's early development and promoting early literacy, especially in communities with higher levels of need.

We're thrilled to present our first ever Gilchrist award to Dr. Schreiner, who serves his young patients and their families with great compassion and leads his clinics with developmentally-centered care. Dr. Schreiner has led the Reach Out and Read program at White Earth since 2009, and throughout these years he has remained accessible, responsive, and  dedicated to promoting the Reach Out and Read model in the White Earth clinics. 

As Dr. Schreiner notes in his acceptance video, parents today face an unprecedented challenge in raising their children in the age of digital media. When young children and their families have access to books and are treated with developmentally focused care, they are far better equipped to overcome adversity and set themselves on a healthy and promising trajectory for the rest of their lives. 

"We are pleased to be able to provide books and we are thrilled that Reach Out and Read provides these books, and many of which incorporate the Ojibwe language," Dr. Schreiner added.