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Water Safety Strategy

introduction CA-Water Safety Strategy

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations General Assembly recommend that countries adopt national water safety frameworks to advance drowning prevention efforts. (1, 2) A consensus driven effort to draft the United States National Water Safety Action Plan is due to release national level recommendations in 2023. (3)

California is a large and diverse state with nearly 40 million residents, thousands of miles of ocean coast and inland lakefront, nearly 200,000 miles of rivers, and over 1.3 million pools. Californians love the water, but the risk of drowning is ever present.

This document represents the first California Water Safety Strategy (CA-WSS). It is intended as a document of alignment, a broad strategy that highlights major priorities and action areas that will lead to a reduction in the burden of drowning across the state.

Importantly, this is not a specific plan with prescriptive action steps. Instead, it serves as a starting point to influence individual and organizational priorities, motivate the development of future strategic plans dedicated to an action area, population, or local geography, and promote ongoing collaborative efforts aimed at reducing drowning.

Consultation

The CA-WSS is the result of extensive consultation with stakeholders from California, across the United States, and other countries. There were several important input activities to this strategy:

  • California drowning epidemiological analysis.

  • Comprehensive stakeholder and landscape analysis

  • Online workshop with 72 participants (Oct. 2021)

  • Multiple working group online meetings involving 47 participants (Aug. & Sep. 2022)

  • Review and incorporation of over 150 initial draft knowledge gaps and action recommendations from the USA National Water Safety Action Plan

  • In-person workshop held in Newport Beach involving 38 participants (Oct. 2022)

  • Strategy draft reviews from more than 80 stakeholders

Although the consultation process for drafting this strategy endeavored to incorporate a diverse range of voices, there may be elements missing in this strategy and stakeholders who have not yet had an opportunity to contribute to this work. We want to hear from, listen to, and collaborate with those communities who did not have input to this document, and are hopeful future versions of the CA-WSS will incorporate additional perspectives.

To this end, feedback to this strategy is welcome and encouraged, please see cawatersafety.org/strategy for more information.