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Yadira Salcedo was born in Mexico to parents who could not swim. As a child, she nearly drowned while wading too deep in a backyard pool.
Now a mother of two in Santa Ana, California, Ms Salcedo ‘breaks the cycle’, she said, making sure Ezra, 3, and Ian, 1, never experience such terror . The family has qualified for Red Cross scholarships under a new program that teaches children who might not have other chances to learn to swim.
Recently, Ms. Salcedo and her children climbed together in the pool at the Salgado Community Center, using kickboards and blowing bubbles with an instructor, Josue, who uses a mix of English and Spanish.
Drowning is the leading cause of death in children ages 1 to 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths are likely to rise this month, as they do every July, with children drowning within feet of their parents without screaming, struggling or splashing. A 4-year-old in a Texas hotel pool, a 5-year-old in a California river, a 6-year-old in a Missouri lake, and a 10-year-old in an Indiana public pool are all drowned in the past. week.
And yet, despite UN appeals, the United States is one of the only developed countries not to have a federal plan to deal with the crisis. Thirty years of progress in reducing the number of drowning deaths in the country appears to have plateaued, and disparities in deaths among certain racial groups have worsened.
“It’s hard to imagine a more preventable cause of death. Nobody’s going to say, ‘Oh, well, some people drown,’ said William Ramos, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Public Health in Bloomington and director of the Aquatics Institute of the school.
“It’s time to go beyond the sad statistics and answer the ‘why’ and the ‘how’,” he said.
A parent who never learned to swim has an 87% chance a child won’t either, said Dr. Sadiqa AI Kendi, division chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center, who study the cyclical nature of injury and inequality.
“It’s anthropology,” Mr. Ramos said. “Starting a new story around water is not an easy task.”
The National Institutes of Health recently published a call for research proposals to examine drowning prevention, writing that “little is known” about intervention strategies that work. The CDC said it plans to do a thorough analysis of childhood drownings in several states to better understand the contributing factors.
But epidemiologists point to a range of factors that could make it increasingly difficult to close the gap, including shrinking recreation service budgets, a shortage of national lifeguards and an era of distraction on pool decks, as parents juggle watching kids with laptops and cellphones while working from home.
In the longer term, the numbers are likely to be exacerbated by climate change, said Deborah Girasek, a drowning researcher at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. More children are likely to drown in hurricane floodwaters in Florida, fall through thin ice in Wisconsin or climb into restricted reservoirs in Yosemite for respite from the rising heat. (Research shows that drownings increase with each degree on a thermometer.)
Although the total number of drowning deaths has reduced by a third since 1990, they have increased by 16.8% In 2020 alone, according to the CDC, there are still more than 4,000 in the United States each year, and about a quarter of the deaths are in children. A CDC analysis shows that black children between 5 and 9 years old are 2.6 times more likely to drown in swimming pools than white children, and those between 10 and 14 years old are 3.6 times more likely to drown. Disparities are also present across most age groups for Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native children.
Socio-economic factors also come into play. A study of drownings in Harris County, Texas, for example, showed that drownings were almost three times more likely for a child in a multi-family home than in a single-family residence, and drownings in multi-family swimming pools – like that of the Salcedos apartment – were 28 times more likely than in single-family pools.
Ms Salcedo said she often saw children swimming in the pool at her apartment complex unsupervised, the door ajar with a bottle of water or a shoe.
The main theory explaining inequality dates back half a century, to the proliferation of municipal swimming pools after World War II. When these gave way to suburban swim clubs and middle-class swimming pools, historian Jeff Wiltse wrote in his book on swimming pool history, white children began to learn to swim in private lessons, while children from minority families saw public swimming pools fall into disrepair and water budgets being cut dramatically. Many education facilities and programs never recovered.
Black adults in particular report having had negative experiences around water, with family anecdotes of being banned from public beaches during Jim Crow-era segregation and being bullied when incorporating public swimming pools.
A UN resolution published in 2021 and a World Health Assembly decision this year to Accelerate Action urged every member country to prioritize the fight against child drowning. Both WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics implored the US government to catch up.
“Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa — they all have a plan. We don’t,” Ramos said. “The message to Congress is this: We need to fix this, and we can. But look at seat belts, fire safety, smoking cessation. Legislation is what’s going to move the needle.
Officials could add aquatic classes to gym class schedules or mandate four-sided pool fencing in backyards (since many victims are still walk around the pools on the exposed side facing the house). Ms Girasek said she was keen to see legislation because “we see very clearly that it is working”.
After former Secretary of State James Baker’s 7-year-old granddaughter, Virginia Graeme Baker, was trapped by the suction of a hot tub drain and drowned, a federal law was named in his honor which required public pools and spas to be equipped with drain covers that met certain standards. This seemed to do anything but eradicate these deaths.
The U.S. National Water Security Action Plan, spear by a group of nonprofit organizations last week, is the country’s first-ever attempt to build a roadmap for dealing with the crisis. Its 99 recommendations for the next decade serve as a sobering guide to the country’s various shortcomings in research, funding, oversight and parenting education, compiled by serious advocacy groups with shoestring budgets that are not not equipped to meet them alone.
Connie Harvey, director of Aquatic Centennial Campaign at the American Red Cross, recently held a briefing on Capitol Hill alongside other experts, she said, “to let our leaders know that there is a plan — that this plan exists.”
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat and longtime drowning prevention advocate, was the only congresswoman to attend.
Meanwhile, some local governments have adopted their own interventions. This summer, Seattle is piloting a new initiative non-profit based No more under, which connects hundreds of low-income and foster children with swimming lessons. Broward County, Florida, which has some of the highest drowning rates in the state, is offering free vouchers. And Santa Ana plans to withdraw more than $800,000 from its Cannabis Public Benefit Fund this year to bring its aquatics program back under its domain.
The city, with a nearly 80% Hispanic population nestled between the more affluent suburbs of Orange County, has historically embodied racial and economic disparities in health. One of its public swimming pools is 63 years old. But its parks and recreation department recently hired a water activities supervisor and 36 new lifeguards, many of whom needed to learn to swim first.
Under Santa Ana’s new program, Ms. Salcedo, a waitress, and her husband, a post office worker, who live in a three-generation household, won scholarships that brought the cost of swimming lessons down to $15. $ per child every two weeks. They plan to attend all summer.
Ezra, who is 3 years old, cried the first day of class. Now he’s sharing facts about hammerhead sharks in between hits during the “Baby Shark” chant. Ian, 1 year old, has not yet mastered land walking. Yet he paddled after an orange rubber duck, with his mother – now a proficient swimmer – keeping him afloat.
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