Identifying opportunities for multisectoral action for drowning prevention: a scoping review

Abstract

BackgroundDrowning is a complex health issue, where global agendas call for greater emphasis on multisectoral action, and engagement with sectors not yet involved in prevention efforts. Here, we explored the conceptual boundaries of drowning prevention in peer-review and grey literature, by reviewing the contexts, interventions, terminologies, concepts, planning models, and sector involvement, to identify opportunities for multisectoral action.MethodsWe applied scoping review method and have reported against Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist. We searched four electronic databases for peer-reviewed articles published on 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2020 and five databases for grey literature published on 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2020. We applied the search term “drowning,” and charted data addressing our research questions.ResultsWe included 737 peer-reviewed articles and 68 grey documents. Peer-publications reported situational assessments (n=478, 64.86%) and intervention research (n=259, 35.14%). Drowning was reported in the context of injury (n=157, 21.30%), commonly in childhood injury (n=72, 9.77%), mortality studies (n=60, 8.14%) and in grey documents addressing adolescent, child, environmental, occupational and urban health, refugee and migrant safety and disaster. Intervention research was mapped to World Health Organization recommended actions. The leading sectors in interventions were health, leisure, education and emergency services.ConclusionAlthough drowning is often described as a major health issue, the sectors and stakeholders involved are multifarious. The interventions are more often initiated by non-health sectors, meaning multisectoral action is critical. Framing drowning prevention to reinforce cobenefits for other health and development agendas could strengthen multisectoral action. Greater investment in partnerships with non-health sectors, encouraging joint planning and implementation, and creating systems for increased accountability should be a priority in future years.

Identifying strategic priorities for advancing global drowning prevention: a Delphi method

“…To our knowledge this is the first multistakeholder and geographically diverse consultation on strategic priorities for drowning prevention, and it comes at a time where increased high-level political focus brings new energy, resources and diverse interests to this previously underappreciated health and development challenge. Recent studies,1 8 9 20 as well as global reports by WHO, have called for multisectoral, and multistakeholder approaches. These calls are reinforced in successive UN,2 and WHA,3 Resolutions, the most recent resulting in WHA Member States requesting that WHO establish a global alliance for drowning prevention, underpinned by a new sense of purpose, strategy and cohesion—globally, regionally and in some cases nationally.…”

“…Recognition of the need for multisectoral action for drowning prevention is growing 9 20. Three of the top 10 strategic priorities focus on facilitating multisectoral action, and the highest levels of support were from policy experts.…”

“…In response, the WHA resolution confirmed the establishment of a global alliance for drowning prevention. The global alliance concept is eagerly anticipated, and should focus on unifying multisectoral actors, strengthening cohesion and promoting alignment and accountability, with the most susceptible and affected communities actively engaged in decision-making 8–11…”

Fatal drowning in Indonesia: understanding knowledge gaps through a scoping review

“…The underreporting of drowning incidents can be linked to the nature of drowning deaths, where victims often suffer a quick death on location and never reach medical facilities or are reported to authorities, which may impede accurate data collection in countries with dependence on facility-based reporting systems, such as in Indonesia ( Linnan et al , 2012 , 2013 ; World Health Organization, 2014 ). These limitations underline the urgent need to strengthen public health system capacity; develop standardized, national health, death and coronial data reporting frameworks; enhance multi-sectoral collaboration and advocate for political and financial investment, to develop a robust drowning data collection system in Indonesia ( Schuurman et al , 2011 ; Reynolds et al , 2013 ; Scarr and Jagnoor, 2022 ).…”

A systematic review of interventions for resuscitation following drowning

“…During the last twenty years, some building blocks for resuscitation research regarding drowning have been established. This includes the establishment of a definition of drowning in 2002, 4 the 2015 revised Utstein-style recommended guidelines for uniform reporting of data from drowning-related resuscitation, 5 and several systematic, 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 scoping 10 , 11 and other structured reviews 12 , 13 of drowning research. Despite the inclusion of drowning in resuscitation guidelines, 14 there has been little systematic synthesis of evidence to inform such guidelines.…”