Drowning prevention program comes to a halt at the CDC

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

August 27, 2025 6:00 AM ET



For the past few years, a small team of health scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been tasked with answering basic statistical questions like: Who is drowning? Where is it happening — in lakes, rivers, swimming pools? And what works to prevent it?

The team was starting to answer some of those questions when it was put on administrative leave in April, according to two former CDC officials familiar with the program. They requested that NPR not use their names because they fear retaliation from the Trump administration for speaking to the media.

Now, those results may not come to light, since the Trump administration terminated the CDC's drowning prevention experts this month and has proposed eliminating the program in its fiscal year 2026 budget request.

"If this program saved one life, it would be far more than the total cost of the program," says Jim Mercy, former director of the Division of Violence Prevention at the CDC, who retired in 2023. "The irony is that these and other programs [at the CDC] were cut under the motivation of creating greater efficiency."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5509976/drowning-prevention-program-halt-cdc

[Tanuki]

1. Given the racial demographics of drowning victims,

it's easy to see why a malignant racist like Trump would want to shut down a drowning prevention program. 🤬

https://journalistsresource.org/health/racial-disparities-in-drowning-deaths-persist-research-shows/

...."For children aged 1 to 4, drowning rates increased by 28% in 2022 compared with 2019. For adults aged 65 to 74, drowning rates increased by 19% in that period, according to the CDC.

Among racial and ethnic groups, American Indian or Alaska Native people have historically had the highest rates of drowning deaths, followed by Black people. In 2021, drowning deaths among Black people increased by 28% compared with 2019, while the rates remained unchanged for AIAN people, the 2024 CDC data shows.
....
In the U.S. roughly 40 million adults don’t know how to swim, including 37% of Black adults, compared to 15% of all adults. More than 60% of Black adults and 72% of Hispanic adults reported never taking a swimming lesson, the latest CDC data shows. Among all adults, nearly 55% have never taken a swimming lesson.

In the 2018 study “Predictors of Swimming Ability among Children and Adolescents in the United States,” published in Sports, researchers found that parents have a strong influence on kids’ ability to swim. Other factors that were positively associated with swimming ability included knowledge of water safety, having access to pools that were open all year and having a best friend who enjoys swimming.".... (more)

[Skittles]

5. everyone should know how to swim

I hassled a coworker into getting swimming lessons for himself and his kids - yes indeed. I told him, you don't even need to be a great swimmer, just be able to float and move. There's SO many low water crossings where we live that can become very hazardous with a lot of rain.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Trump is not interested in saving American lives.

In fact he is interested in the opposite.

[Botany]

3. "They" want to kill us by:

Last edited Wed Aug 27, 2025, 08:31 PM - Edit history (2)

Drowning
Lack of education and the influence of Christo Fascisism
Covid
Measles
ICE
Foreign Prison and torture
shootings ... today is the 27th of August and we have had 38 mass shootings (4 or more people shot @ one time) this month.
wild fires
lack of health care
no health care
poverty and despair
attacks by MAGA thugs in many different forms
unclean food
climate change .... getting rid of NOAA’s atmospheric observatory on Mauna Loa is insanity
no storm warnings
diseases
having to carry a baby to term no matter what
racism & sexism
political corruption
Russian misinformation disguised as news aka Fox News ... storm 15-16
suicides of LGBT and others
new strains of diseases and then telling scientists they can't look @ the real science such as RNA
stupid wars
terrorist attacks ... do you think those people who get sent to Central American prisons or African prisons
won't come back or have family and/or friends attack Americans
Robert Kennedy Jr having anything to do with anything
Airplanes and an understaffed FAA
Environmental toxins such as from burning coal
Flooding from too much water in the atmosphere from global warming
Sending armed troops into America
unclean milk .... they fired the USDA's microbiologists
cancer that might be treatable with science
and on and on

BTW getting rid of USAID has already killed more than 1/2 million in Africa in 2025

This is all part of the Fascist plan of those like Peter Theil, Musk, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorky, and Trumpwe can't hide from the truth they are at war on the people of America. End of story. They rigged the election in order to thin the herd of useless eaters.

[littlemissmartypants]

4. Thank you for this. It's important...

That we document the process. It's also helpful to have it to share. ❤️