Drowning prevention program comes to a halt at the CDC : Shots

Dorgie Productions / Getty Images / The Image Bank RF

In recent years, a small team of health scientists for centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been responsible for answering basic statistical questions like: who is drowning? Where does it happen – in lakes, rivers, swimming pools? And what works to prevent it?

The team began to answer some of these questions when it was put on administrative leave in April, according to two former CDC officials close to the program. They asked that NPR does not use their names because they fear reprisals from the Trump administration for having spoken to the media.

Now these results may not be revealed because the Trump administration has dismissed experts in the prevention of CDC drowning this month and proposed to eliminate the program in its budget request from the 2026.

“If this program saves a life, it would be much more than the total cost of the program,” explains Jim Mercy, former director of the Division of the Prevention of Violence at the CDC, who retired in 2023. “The irony is that these programs and others [at the CDC] were cut under the motivation to create greater efficiency. “”

Drown kills more than 4,000 people each year in the United States. This is the main cause of death in children aged 1 to 4 and is one of the main causes of death in children aged 5 to 14. A single drowning costs millions of dollars in terms of medical costs and societal loss, says Mercy.

The CDC drowning prevention program was created in response to a drowning death peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. “After the pandemic, a lot of organizations have gathered to stimulate certain work possibilities focused on the federal government over drowning,” explains Lindsay Mondick, director of aquatic strategy and quality practices for the YMCA on a national scale and a long -standing defender of aquatic security. “The CDC was a natural adjustment – not only do they make data science, but they also examine intervention strategies and programs.”

Drown is largely preventable and costs the US economy more than $ 50 billion a year. CDC efforts had been focused in two areas: to determine the risk factors around drowning and what works to prevent drowning, to reduce the probability that children die from drowning.

The drowning prevention team worked with partners such as the YMCA, the Red Cross and the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention to help collect and assess the data, as well as to teach children to swim.

Work with ymca

YMCA has an aquatic safety approach it has been using for about a decade. “He focuses on skills development for swimming and water skills – skills that ensure people’s safety if they had to have accidents or find themselves in an unpredictable situation,” said Mondick.

In recent years, the CDC has helped him collect data to understand what worked. “One of the things that excited us the most with this funding is that the YMCA was able to build, I think, which is probably the largest drowning data collection center,” she said.

As part of the process, the CDC has financed free swimming lessons for thousands of high -risk children. This included children from certain minority groups and those of the autism spectrum, which are 160 times more likely than their peers to die of drowning, according to a study by the University of Columbia.

“For a child with special sensory needs, not only are their senses disputed because of water, but it’s noisy and it’s hot and that’s all,” said Jennifer Pewitt, who oversees YMCA swimming programs in the Dallas metro region.

In an installation, swimming instructors have received specialized training on connection with children on the autism spectrum. When the parents heard this program said, they came from all the county of Dallas. “There is a huge community need,” said Pewitt. “There were really impressive stories that came out. And there were failures.”

This is the learning process, said Pewitt. All the time, they collected data with CDC advice. “It does not use epidemiologists there – it is not one thing,” she said.

The objective was to understand how to best teach children at high risk of drowning to swim and reduce their risks around water and largely share these lessons. “This is where magic happens – if what worked with these children can be reproduced,” explains Pewitt. “It was all the interest.”

Potential impact

The CDC program employed three health scientists and had an annual budget of $ 2 million, most of which were spent from partner organizations.

“It is a very small program, but very important,” said Mercy, formerly with the CDC, adding that the program had a strong bipartisan support when it began to receive funding from Congress a few years ago.

Especially in small cities, cutting the funding of the CDC would be a big loss, explains Pewitt. “It is really sad that there are not these opportunities for these little ones to serve children in their community.”

The Ministry of Health and Social Services did not respond to a request for comments.