Drowning is the No. 1 killer of young children. Attempts by the US to solve the problem are lagging behind.

Yadira Salcedo was born in Mexico to parents who could not swim. As a child, she nearly drowned when she waded too deep into a backyard pool.

Now a mother of two in Santa Ana, California, Ms. Salcedo is “breaking the cycle,” she said, making sure Ezra, 3, and Ian, 1, never experience such anxiety. The family has qualified for Red Cross scholarships for a new program that teaches children who may not have other opportunities to learn how to swim.

Recently, Ms. Salcedo and her children climbed together in the pool at the Salgado Community Center, using kickboards and blowing bubbles with an instructor, Josue, who uses a mix of English and Spanish.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4. The number of deaths is likely to rise this month, as it does every July, with children drowning within a stone’s throw of their parents without a shriek, struggle or splash. A 4-year-old at a hotel pool in Texas, a 5-year-old in a river in California, a 6-year-old at a lake in Missouri and a 10-year-old at a public pool in Indiana all drowned in the past week.

And yet, despite calls from the United Nations, the United States is one of the few developed countries without a federal plan to deal with the crisis. Thirty years of progress in reducing the country’s drowning deaths appear to have leveled off, and disparities in deaths between some racial groups have worsened.

“It’s hard to imagine a more preventable cause of death. No one is going to say, ‘Oh well, some people just drown,’” said William Ramos, an associate professor at Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington and the director of the school’s Aquatics Institute.

“It’s time to dig deeper than the sad statistics and answer the ‘why’ and the ‘how’,” he said.

A parent who never learned to swim has an 87 percent chance that a child won’t either, said Dr. Sadiqa AI Kendi, chief of the division of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, who cyclical nature of injury and inequality.

“This is anthropology,” said Mr. Ramos. “Starting a new story around water is no easy task.”

The National Institutes of Health recently published this a call for research proposals to investigate drowning prevention, writing that “little is known” about which intervention strategies work. The CDC said it planned to conduct an in-depth analysis of childhood drownings in different states to better understand the contributing factors.

But epidemiologists point to a range of factors that could make it increasingly difficult to close the gap, including shrinking budgets for recreation departments, a national lifeguard shortage and an age of distraction on the pool deck as parents juggle child supervision with laptops and cell phones as they work from home.

In the longer term, the numbers are likely to be exacerbated by climate change, said Deborah Girasek, a drowning researcher at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. More kids are likely to drown in the floodwaters of a Florida hurricane, fall through thin ice in Wisconsin or climb into restricted reservoirs in Yosemite to get respite from the increasing heat. (Research shows that drownings increase with every degree on a thermometer.)

Although in general there are deaths from drowning dropped by a third they have since 1990 increased by 16.8 percent in 2020 alone, according to the CDC. There are still more than 4,000 a year in the United States, and about a quarter of the deaths involve children. A analysis by the CDC shows that black children between the ages of 5 and 9 are 2.6 times more likely to drown in swimming pools than white children, and that children between the ages of 10 and 14 are 3.6 times more likely to drown. Differences are also present in most age groups for Asian and Pacific Islanders, Hispanic and Native American, and Alaska Native children.

Socio-economic factors also play a role. For example, a study of drownings in Harris County, Texas, found that the chances of a child drowning in a multi-family home are nearly three times higher than in a single-family home, and that drownings in multi-family swimming pools — such as the one in Salcedos’ apartment — goods 28 times more likely than in single-family pools.

Ms Salcedo said she often saw children swimming unsupervised in her apartment complex’s pool, leaving the gate ajar with a bottle of water or a shoe.

The leading theory to explain the inequalities goes back half a century to the proliferation of municipal swimming pools after World War II. As those gave way to suburban swim clubs and middle-class backyard pools, historian Jeff Wiltse wrote in his book on pool history, white children began learning to swim in private lessons, while children in minority families saw public pools become dilapidated and water budgets slashed. Many of the facilities and education programs were never restored.

Black adults in particular report having negative experiences with water, with family anecdotes of being banned from public beaches during Jim Crow-era segregation and being mistreated during the integration of public pools.

A UN solution issued in 2021 and a World Health Assembly decision to accelerate action this year, urged each member nation to prioritize the fight against child drownings. Both WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics have pleaded with the United States government to catch up.

“Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – they all have a plan. We don’t,” said Mr. Ramos. “The message to Congress is: we have to fix this, and we can. But look at seat belts, fire safety, smoking cessation. Legislation is what will move the needle.

Officials could add water sports to gym class curricula or mandate four-sided pool fences in backyards (as many victims are still wander into pools from the exposed side opposite the house). Ms Girasek said she would like to see legislation because “we see very clearly that it works.”

After Virginia Graeme Baker, the 7-year-old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker, became trapped by the suction of a hot tub drain and drowned, a federal law was named after her that required public pools and spas to be equipped with drain covers that meet certain standards. It seemed to almost wipe out such deaths.

The US National Water Safety Action Plan, launched by a group of nonprofits last week, marks the country’s first-ever effort to create a roadmap to deal with the crisis. The 99 recommendations for the next decade serve as a sobering guide through the country’s various gaps in research, funding, oversight and parental education, put together by serious advocacy groups with small budgets not equipped to fill them alone.

Connie Harvey, the director of the Aquatics Centennial Campaign at the American Red Cross, along with other experts, recently held a Capitol Hill briefing, she said, “to let our leaders know that there is a plan — that this plan exists.”

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat and longtime advocate for drowning prevention, was the only member of Congress present.

Meanwhile, some local governments have adopted their own interventions. This summer, Seattle is piloting a new initiative based on the non-profit organization No more under, which connects hundreds of low-income and foster children with swimming lessons. Broward County, Florida, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the state, is offering free vouchers. And Santa Ana plans to raise more than $800,000 from its Cannabis Public Benefit Fund this year to bring its aquatics program back under its domain.

Nestled among Orange County’s wealthier suburbs, the city, with a population nearly 80 percent Hispanic, has historically been the epitome of racial and economic health disparities. One of the public pools is 63 years old. But the Parks and Recreation Department recently hired a water sports supervisor and 36 new lifeguards — several of whom had to learn to swim first.

Under the new Santa Ana program, Ms. Salcedo, a waitress, and her husband, a postal worker, who live in a three-generation household, received grants that reduced the cost of swimming lessons to $15 per child every two weeks. They plan to be there all summer.

Ezra, who is 3, cried on the first day of class. Now he’s sharing hammerhead facts between strokes while singing along to “Baby Shark.” Ian, the 1-year-old, has not yet mastered walking on land. Still, he paddled after an orange rubber duck, his mother—now a skilled swimmer—holding him upright.