NYWSC PUSHES HOSPITAL MATERNITY VIDEO BILL THROUGH STATE LEGISLATURE

Formed in 2020 in response to the pandemic, the New York Water Safety Coalition (NYWSC) began as a group of swim schools working together to lobby state & local officials to safely reopen indoor pools.

BY BRENDAN O’MELVENY FOUNDER, NYWSC

Once COVID-related restrictions were lifted, we decided to stay together, with the goal of advancing legislation that would reduce drownings across our state and raise awareness of how important it is to learn how to swim.

We’ve advocated for several bills since then, including one that created a statesponsored commission to study childhood drowning. That bill passed last year, with one of our members now serving as the commission’s vice-chair.

As a group, we frequently discuss ideas for new drowning prevention bills. Typically, we evaluate an idea’s potential impact on drowning rates first, then its potential business impact on member schools, and finally its legislative and operational feasibility. Most of our ideas have yet to make it off the drawing board. Some have been successful. Others have garnered widespread political support before being sidelined due to poor timing - like our drowning prevention public awareness campaign bill, which passed through the Senate but ran out of time at the end of the legislative session before it could receive a final vote in the Assembly. One bill in particular, though, became a favorite among coalition members because of its common sense nature, ease of implementation, & high impact potential.

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The bill, modeled after the “shaken baby video” law in place in New York and other states, requires hospitals to offer new parents a brief, stateapproved video during the mother’s maternity stay highlighting the dangers of drowning for infants and young children. We figured, if drowning is the leading cause of death for children under five and many parents do not understand all the risk factors that lead to these deaths, why aren’t we educating parents about water safety from the time their children are born?

With the help of our lobbyist, we created a strategy to get this bill passed into law. The USSSA helped us create a pilot video to show to representatives and other stakeholders. We met with key lawmakers who have shown interest in water safety issues in the past. We found a senator and an assembly member to champion our bill as sponsors. Then we met with numerous other representatives on the issue.

During these meetings, we shared data that demonstrated the scope of the problem, the risk factors that contribute to drowning, and the increased risk for minorities, low-income households, and individuals with special needs. We shared a map that plots 6 years of recent drowning deaths in the state to show, with great visual impact, that drowning affects New Yorkers in every political district.

We also shared evidence that backs up key drowning prevention measures, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) study which showed that participation in formal swim instruction can reduce a young child’s risk of drowning by an astounding 88%. The majority of these officials expressed surprise at the fact that drowning is a leading cause of death among children. All of them indicated that the hospital video bill is a common sense measure that should garner broad support. Most of them signed on as co-sponsors.

Some individuals did express concern that new mothers are already inundated with an overwhelming amount of health & safety information during their hospital maternity stay, suggesting that we shouldn’t add yet another item to that list. We found that an effective way to address such concerns was to share the CDC’s bar graphs that show causes of death for children by age group. Seeing drowning at the top of the chart for kids 1-4 years of age, and second only to automobile accidents for those 5-14, was enough to convince anyone with doubts.

After jumping through all the different legislative hoops & passing through a variety of committees, our “hospital video bill” finally found its way to the senate floor, where it passed with unanimous support. Its companion bill in the Assembly eventually made it to the floor as well, though an “eleventh hour” procedural hiccup prevented it from making it onto a decisive http://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/lcd/home committee agenda. Fortunately, our lobbying firm stepped in to save the day, leveraging political relationships nurtured over decades of working in Albany to get the bill “re-referenced”, or transferred to a different committee. This enabled it to be considered before the end of the legislative session. To our great delight, it subsequently sailed through to a full vote on the Assembly floor just in time to be passed with unanimous approval.

Having passed both sides of the legislature, we now wait for our bill to be transmitted to the governor’s desk. This could happen anytime between now and the end of the year. With drowning rates on the rise and summer in full swing, we now turn our focus to encouraging the governor to make the bill an urgent priority. We have secured support for this effort from the state’s childhood drowning study commission and are encouraging our other allies to write to the governor to express their support as well. The next step will be to seek a direct meeting with the governor’s office.