2022 CALIFORNIA WATER SAFETY SUMMIT
March 21 & 22, 2022 - Newport Beach
About the Summit
Over the course of two days in March, more than 125 water safety advocates came together at the Newport Beach Marriott for the California Water Safety Summit and formal launch of the California Water Safety Coalition.
Participants heard from expert speakers and panelists and collaborated among themselves on practices, programs, and policies that reduce drowning and aquatic injuries.
Video recordings from the Summit are now available!
With more than 100 water safety advocates coming together in-person, the California Water Safety Summit got off to a strong start on March 21st with welcomes from Chris Carlson, Ben Carlson Foundation; Karen Cohn, The ZAC Foundation; Jeff Boyles, Newport Beach Fire Chief; Kevin Muldoon, Newport Beach Mayor; and Candace Thome, Swim Brayv Foundation.
With Rob Williams and Will Koon of the CWSC moderating, we turned to detailed presentations on drowning-related data from Dr. Tessa Clemens, PhD of the CDC and Dr. Orion Stewart, PhD & Dr. Renay Bradley, PhD of the California Department of Public Health.
Here we learned that globally, over 230,000 people die from drowning each year, and that drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death. In California, for every fatal drowning, three people are treated for non-fatal drowning at a hospital/emergency department.
Next we turned to an update on the National Water Safety Action Plan from Megan Ferraro of The ZAC Foundation who serves on the NWSAP Steering Committee. The 10-year plan will focus on five evidence-based strategies, as well as data and public health surveillance. We look forward to the Plan's high-level formal recommendations being published in Fall 2022.
We next got an update on the California Water Safety Coalition itself – including goals and priority efforts over the next two years. This was followed by a panel discussion with local coalitions on drowning prevention at the community level.
The afternoon included twelve separate presentations from the spectrum of water safety advocates covering a wide range of topics including community level programs, data, and partnership. Thank you to our four moderators, Pete DeQuincy, Leslie Schwene, Mary Ann Downing, and Marcia Kerr.
Day 1 closed with a discussion on cross sector partnerships for water safety. The panel shared lessons learned from other injury prevention areas, guidance on best practice for collaboration across fields, and recommendations on how to sustain partnerships over time.
Day 2 kicked off with an engaging and reveling workshop on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the drowning prevention space, led by Dr. Miriam Lynch of Diversity in Aquatics, national champion Byron Davis, and USA Water Polo's John Abdou. We were also privileged to hear from Dr. Angela Beale Tawfeeq. We were reminded that: Diversity is a fact. Equity is a choice. Inclusion is an action. Belonging is an outcome.
To learn more about Diversity in Aquatics, please click here.
We closed the Summit with detailed updates from industry partners moderated by Mike Beuerlein, a status check on national and state-level advocacy efforts, and an open session on where the CWSC can and should go from here.
