Water Safety Strategy

Priority 2: DATA CA-WSS

Data

California Water Safety Priority 2
Goal: To establish and communicate valid, timely, and accessible information on the burden of drowning.

Why is this a priority?

A baseline set of metrics examining the burden of drowning in the state allows drowning prevention advocates to better answer questions such as:

  • Who has a higher risk of drowning? Who does not? Why the difference?

  • Where do drowning events occur?

  • Why do people drown? What are the circumstances around the event?

  • When do drownings happen? Are there peak times of year or day?

  • How could this event have been prevented?

In order to provide timely and reliable data to be able to answer these questions, data systems need to be reliable, timely and usable following best practices in collection, standardization, management, use, analysis and dissemination. Furthermore, robust data on fatal and non-fatal drowning allows for the evaluation of policies and programs to ensure that resources are being used judiciously and equitably.

Knowledge Gaps

Three major areas require attention to improve understanding of the drowning burden in California:

  1. Societal burden of drowning

Descriptive epidemiological information of health data including death and hospitalization information, and disaggregating data is essential, but only the start. Water safety interventions and advocacy would benefit from data and research that improves understanding of the economic cost of drowning to the health system and society at large, and the social, emotional, and mental toll drowning has on families, communities, rescuers, and caretakers. Furthermore, improving data collection using variables that are more inclusive of racial, ethnicity, gender and ability status are needed.

  1. Broader case inclusion

As introduced in Section 1, how drowning and non-fatal drowning are traditionally classified has the potential to undercut the burden. As international and national conversations around drowning classification issues continue, California’s drowning prevention stakeholders should consider inclusion of cases from boating, water- transport, and disasters; of intentional and undetermined intent; and where drowning is listed as a contributing cause.

  1. Non-fatal drowning

Reporting must go beyond death. Improved understanding of the non-fatal drowning burden in California is required, inclusion of this information in decision-making around development of prevention interventions is key.

Key Data Activity
Identify and Map Existing Data Sources

A comprehensive scan which identifies existing databases and systems that store fatal and non-fatal drowning data would provide baseline understanding on what data currently exist, where, and how these data are collected. Initial drowning data source mapping projects have occurred in some California counties, (20) extending this work to other locations and the state level will improve systems and help prioritize and guide prevention efforts. Information sources that provide scene and circumstantial context beyond vital statistics should be prioritized.

This data mapping activity should address the following:

  • How is the data collected?

  • How and who manages the data?

  • Who uses and is able to access the data for use?

  • How are data analyzed?

  • How and in what format are data disseminated to the public?

  • What are the strengths and limitations of the data?

  • How do the data collection, analysis and dissemination activities reflect principles of equity?

Data

California Water Safety Priority 2

Key Action Areas

Community Programs and Education

Data Communication and Reporting

Work to share data in public facing reports to ensure stakeholders, organizations and community members can access data and understand the issue.

Program Metrics

Develop and collect useful and inclusive program metrics for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

Professional Training and Capacity

Data Collection Training

Develop collection systems that are easy to use and help inform operations or prevention. Train emergency responders, lifeguards, and other water safety professionals on the importance of valid and reliable data, and their important role in collection.

Analysis Capacity

Improve organizational capacity to disaggregate, analyze and report on data within any organization involved in water safety, and/or, develop partnerships to do so.

Policy and Systems

Working Group

Establish a surveillance workgroup composed of analysis professionals from across the state to advance these action areas, sharing lessons learned, work with existing data, and make recommendations on improving drowning data collection and analysis.

Drowning Registry

Investigate the development of a fatal and non- fatal drowning registry to inform prevention activities. Learn from the current California Department of Public Health Childhood Drowning Data Collection Pilot Program with intent to expand to all age groups. (21)

Data Linkage

Link death, hospital, and scene based data sources (EMS, Lifeguard, Police) to identify risk factors across the drowning process.

Child Death Review

Enhance capacity of California Child Death Review teams to investigate the circumstances of drowning incidents to inform and recommend prevention efforts, explore the feasibility of including non-fatal incidents for review.

Standardization of Data Collection Tool

Work to ensure data collection tools for submersion and rescue events are uniform and representative of all populations between locations and organizations.