A small CDC team studied who drowns, where drownings occur, and what prevents them. The team was placed on administrative leave in April, then terminated, and the program faces elimination in the fiscal 2026 budget. Drowning kills more than 4,000 people annually in the United States, is the leading cause of death for ages 1 to 4, and is a top cause for ages 5 to 14. The program began after a pandemic-era spike in drowning. Experts emphasize that prevention is cost-effective, single drownings incur millions in societal costs, and CDC expertise matched data and intervention needs.
If this program saved one life, it would be far more than the total cost of the program,
The irony is that these and other programs [at the CDC] were cut under the motivation of creating greater efficiency.
After the pandemic, quite a few organizations came together to drive some possibilities of federally focused work on drowning prevention,
CDC was a natural fit not only do they do data science, but they also look at intervention strategies and programs.
Collection
[
|
...
]