Hundreds of lives could be saved each year by broader use of life jackets and more fences around swimming pools, according to new modeling from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers, in one of the last studies produced by some of the agency’s injury prevention experts before they were eliminated by layoffs this year.
“These known strategies are already helping to prevent drowning incidents, but there remains a substantial unrealised potential for saving more lives,” wrote the authors of the study, which was published this week in the Injury Prevention journal.
Researchers aimed to estimate the number of deaths each year caused by two factors: inadequate fencing to prevent young children from wandering into swimming pools and Americans not wearing a life jacket while boating.
Out of 4,509 drowning deaths reported in 2022, the CDC’s modeling found that 51 likely could have been prevented by better pool fencing, and 297 could have been prevented by victims wearing a life jacket during a boating accident.
That adds up to thousands of dollars in medical spending and an economic cost to the country of $4.5 billion, the CDC researchers estimated.
“Increased adherence to adequate pool fencing and always wearing a life jacket while boating could avert a substantial number of deaths and enormous economic cost each year in the USA,” the authors wrote.
The CDC did not respond to a request for an interview about the new study.
Researchers behind the study had worked for the agency’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which had been responsible for the federal government’s work studying drowning prevention and other leading causes of injury.
The CDC’s drowning prevention researchers were among the teams that were entirely eliminated at the agency’s injury center, multiple officials said, alongside staff responsible for the federal government’s rape prevention program, traumatic brain injury research and database on injuries ranging from suicides to accidents.
This year’s layoffs mean, as one laid-off CDC employee described on the condition of anonymity, that all of the center’s “economists, statisticians, and programmers who do the sometimes inglorious grinding technical work needed to inform the public accurately about critical issues related to injuries and violence” will be let go.
Only a handful of studies remain in the pipeline from the agency’s injury prevention researchers that had been authored before layoff notices were delivered on April 1, the employee said.
The center’s remaining staff are expected to be among those merged into the new Administration for a Healthy America agency created by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.