Drowning Deaths Among Children Drop, but Disparities Remain | Healthiest Communities Health News

Unintentional drowning deaths among children declined over the past two decades, but Black children have still been dying at a higher rate than white and Hispanic children, a new report shows.

The analysis published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that between 1999 and 2019, the rate of unintentional drowning deaths among children up to 17 years old dropped by 38%, going from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 population in 1999 to 1 per 100,000 in 2019. More than 1,100 children died of unintentional drowning in 1999, compared with 756 two decades later.

For children ages 1 through 4 – among whom accidental drowning death rates have consistently been the highest – the rate declined from 3.2 in 1999 to 2.4 in 2019, but was still much higher than that of other age groups in 2019: The rate that year was 0.5 per 100,000 for those 5 to 13 years old, for instance, and was 0.9 per 100,000 for those 14 to 17. Similarly, drowning rates were higher for boys than girls throughout the entire period and, in 2019, the rate for boys was more than twice that of girls.

Other disparities also were present, even as drowning rates dropped for all groups by age, race or ethnicity in the study. For example, the rate was significantly higher among Black children than white or Hispanic children in all years studied, the report says.

And while rates of unintentional drowning among Black children declined from 2.7 in 1999 to 1.6 in 2003 – helping to shrink the gaps between Black and white children and Black and Hispanic children – they remained stable from 2003 through 2019. Rates declined an average of 1.5% a year for white children – going from 1.3 to 1.0 per 100,000 over two decades – and an average of 3% per year for Hispanic children.

Though rates of unintentional drowning deaths among children decreased in both urban and rural areas as well, the report shows, the rate for children in rural counties still remained higher than for those in urban counties in 2019. The unintentional drowning rate for children in rural counties decreased from 2.2 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.6 in 2019, while the rate for children in urban counties dropped from 1.5 in 1999 to 0.9 in 2013, then remained stable through 2019, when the rate was 1 per 100,000.

During 2018-2019, the highest percentage of these deaths among children under the age of 1 occurred in a bathtub. For kids ages 1 through 4 and 5 through 13, the highest percentage of deaths occurred in swimming pools, while the highest percentage of deaths for kids 14 through 17 occurred in natural bodies of water.

A similar publication this month from the American Academy of Pediatrics states that drowning as of 2018 had supplanted birth defects as the most common cause of death among children 1 to 4 years old. That report says almost 900 drowning deaths occurred in 2018 among children and youths younger than 20.