Sesame Workshop Launches New Resources for Parents, Caregivers, and Healthcare Providers Addressing Health and Well-Being Inequities, with Support from Quest Diagnostics

Resources focus on children’s wider circle of care by supporting parents and caregivers in communicating with providers through videos, interactive role-playing, digital storybooks, printable guides, and more.

(New York, NY, March 22, 2023) Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, which reaches over 150 million children across more than 150 countries, today announced new resources addressing health and well-being inequities among young children, particularly in low-income, rural, and marginalized communities. These resources are made possible through a grant from Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic information services.

The pandemic has had wide-ranging and lingering effects on children’s health, causing many to miss routine and preventive health care check-ups. Preventive health care for children is critical to address physical, mental, and emotional conditions and is essential for providing routine vaccinations, tracking developmental milestones, treating identified health concerns, and providing support to families.

These new bilingual resources, available in English and Spanish, are designed to connect and support parents, caregivers, and health care providers as partners in children’s health care by promoting whole child well-being, focusing on forming a healthy team, and building on families’ strengths. Each family has their own unique strengths, and many of those strengths are related to their culture. The resources include:

• “I’m Listening,” a new video featuring Rosita and her abuela (grandmother) visiting their pediatrician for Rosita’s 5-year-old well visit. This fun and engaging video reminds us that well-child visits are a great time to communicate. Good communication among family, health care providers, and children leads to trusting relationships and inspires healthy habits. Rosita also talks about dancing with her extended family at parties and falling asleep to her Abuela’s lullabies; a helpful reminder that families’ culture and traditions play an important role in wellness too.
• Elmo and Abby’s Check-up Play Date, an interactive role-playing game where Elmo and Abby pretend they’re doctors! Make-believe play builds a variety of helpful skills. Children can “act out” familiar scenes and work through their emotions. When they’re playing the doctor, children feel more in control and less nervous about the unknown.
• “Hooray for Healthy Teams!” is a digital storybook for parents and caregivers to read together with children about their “healthy team” — parents, extended family, caregivers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and themselves. In this storybook, Wes and his dad Elijah talk about Wes’s healthy team — the important people who help keep his body and brain healthy, strong, and safe. 
• A printable activity book for caregivers and children to prepare for doctor visits, with tips for before, during, and after a visit and activities and games to help children feel comfortable and calm. Also available are printable guides to help prepare for, and make the most of, children’s well-visits and printable posters for health care providers.

“We’re proud to work with Quest in creating resources that empower our ‘healthy teams’ with a common language that highlights the unique strengths of families and communities,” said Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s Senior Vice President of U.S. Social Impact. “Completing that circle of care, especially for those most marginalized communities, is essential to ensure our young ones are on track to grow and thrive.”

Quest has teamed up with Sesame Workshop as part of Quest for Health Equity (Q4HE), a multi-year initiative formed with its Quest Diagnostics Foundation, which is focused on providing a combination of donated testing services, educational programs, and funding to support initiatives working to close the gap in health care disparities in underserved communities across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

“Teaming up with Sesame Workshop to support these resources will ensure children everywhere have access to health resources that they can understand,” said Michael Floyd, Senior Director and leader of Quest for Health Equity. “Supporting underserved communities is integral to our mission at Q4HE, and Sesame Workshop’s work to address the health and wellness needs of children in these communities is something we are both inspired by and humbled to be part of.” 

The new resources will be available in English at sesame.org/healthyteam and in Spanish at  sesame.org/equipodesalud and are being implemented with national partners — the Council on Black Health, National Alliance for Hispanic Health, National Association of Community Health Centers, and The Center for Indigenous Health.

Additionally, they are being distributed through the Sesame Street in Communities program, an initiative for community providers who serve families and help children face challenges big and small. Teachers, health care professionals, social workers — any providers working with families and children — are invited to use and share Sesame Workshop’s large and growing library of bilingual resources and professional development tools, created to support them in their vital work.  

About Sesame Workshop 
Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, the pioneering television show that has been reaching and teaching children since 1969. Today, Sesame Workshop is an innovative force for change, with a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. We’re present in more than 150 countries, serving vulnerable children through a wide range of media, formal education, and philanthropically funded social impact programs, each grounded in rigorous research and tailored to the needs and cultures of the communities we serve. Learn more at www.sesameworkshop.org and follow Sesame Workshop on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. 

About Quest Diagnostics 
Quest Diagnostics empowers people to take action to improve health outcomes. Derived from the world’s largest database of clinical lab results, Quest’s diagnostic insights reveal new avenues to identify and treat disease, inspire healthy behaviors, and improve health care management. Quest Diagnostics annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our nearly 50,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives. www.QuestDiagnostics.com. 

About Quest for Health Equity
Quest for Health Equity is an initiative of Quest Diagnostics and the Quest Diagnostics Foundation focused on providing resources, funding, testing services, and education to address health disparities in underserved communities across the U.S and Puerto Rico.