By providing their patients and parents with information and guidance about prevention of drowning, pediatricians could save children's lives. Although pediatricians have been effective child advocates in a number of injury prevention areas, drowning has not been widely addressed in their practices or formal training. Of the 560 pediatricians questioned about their knowledge, beliefs, and practices concerning drowning prevention, only 4.1 percent were personally involved in community education or legislative efforts to prevent childhood drowning. Pediatricians are in an ideal position to make these facts known to parents and should advise them to fence all pools, learn CPR, and teach children over 3 years old to swim. Approximately the same number of children drown in residential swimming pools each year as the number who died in the year before the Poison Prevention Packaging Act, which pediatricians were instrumental in passing in 1970.
Clinicians can combat childhood drowning by making prevention a practice priority.
J.K. Robinson, A.W. Rademaker et al. Teenagers can prevent skin cancer and sunburn by using adequate quantities of sunscreen prior to sun exposure, by wearing protective clothing, and by ceasing deliberate tanning. Parents and physicians should encourage and ensure teen sun-prevention behavior, and parents should serve as role models. Experts hypothesize that 90 percent of the cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer and two-thirds of the cases of melanoma may be attributed to excessive sunlight exposure. Since the average American obtains most of his lifetime sun exposure prior to age 21, adequate sun protection by teens will reduce their lifetime risk of developing skin cancer.