‘Zero drowning’ program boosts safety and prevents deaths

Key Takeaways

In Miami-Dade County, Fla. the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1-14 is drowning. To help turn the tide against child drownings, the county is helping children learn how to swim and investing in community water safety education.   

Through the “Zero Drowning” initiative, kindergarteners in Miami-Dade County Public Schools attend 30-minute swimming lessons for 10 days, at a municipal or partnering private swimming pool within 15 minutes of their respective schools. Participating in formal swimming lessons is associated with an 88% reduction in a child’s risk of drowning, according to a 2009 case-control study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

County partners that helped make the initiative possible include Miami-Dade County Public Schools, The Children’s Trust, The Miami Foundation, United Way Miami, American Red Cross, Edu Foundation and the Templeton Family Foundation. 

“We had a group of people — governmental, private, nonprofit — that came together and said, ‘Enough is enough, we have to do something,’” said Jim O’Connor, chief of the Miami-Dade County Parks’ Office of Drowning Prevention.

There are usually three reasons why children don’t take swim lessons: Cost, transportation barriers or having a parent or caregiver who doesn’t know how to swim themselves, according to O’Connor, who has been a swim instructor for 45 years and wrote his master’s thesis on accidental drownings in the United States. 

“If a parent doesn’t know how to swim, they’re less likely to teach their children or have their children sign up for swim lessons,” O’Connor said. “So, we try to take care of the fear factor by providing education to the parent during the registration process to encourage them to sign up.”

Parents and caregivers of children participating in the program also receive education on water safety through the Zero Drowning initiative in the form of a 40-page PowerPoint that’s offered in English, Spanish and Haitian-Creole. The program, which is completely free for participants, has a 100% parent satisfaction rate, according to a county survey. 

One parent wrote in their survey response: “[Zero Drowning] has greatly improved my child’s confidence, especially in water-related activities. He’s become much more confident going to the pool. Thank you for the program.”

Other survey respondents said, “My daughter learned how to swim, and lost her fear of the water” and “[It was a] beautiful experience, tons of joys. The instructors were great.”

Miami-Dade County Public Schools provides its buses as transportation to the swimming pools, and the county provides transportation for 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Start. More than 100 schools and child care centers have participated. 

The initiative focuses on kindergarteners because “they’re at a little bit higher risk of drowning than the older kids, and their test schedule isn’t as intensive,” O’Connor said. “So, we work with the school calendar, and it’s really considered a two-week field trip.”

Miami-Dade County has set a goal to reach 20,000 children through the Zero Drowning initiative by 2027, and plans to sustain that level for future generations, O’Connor noted. 

To date, it’s reached roughly 4,000 children and is on track to have roughly doubled the number of children participating each year since its launch in 2024, according to O’Connor. This summer, the program will expand into summer camps, as well. 

As part of the initiative’s broader goal to improve the dissemination of water safety education, the county launched a website that provides safety tips and information on the program. It also acts as an interactive hub for people to get connected to municipal and private swim providers, O’Connor noted. 

“One of the common questions we always get is, ‘I don’t have a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old [child], but I have an 8-year-old who wants to take swim classes,” O’Connor said. “So they can click on a map and find swim lessons in areas where they live, and then go to the municipal governments or the private swim providers that are our partners and sign up directly on their website.”

Zero Drowning is aiming for 15% of the participants it serves to be children with disabilities. In its second year, it’s nearly met that goal, O’Connor noted. 

Children with autism are up to 160 times more likely to drown than their neurotypical peers, according to the National Autism Association. While there’s typically six neurotypical children for every swim instructor, when there’s a child with disabilities, the accommodation could switch to teaching them one-on-one, depending on need, according to O’Connor. 

“These children are naturally attracted to the water,” O’Connor said. “It’s very soothing, they tend to wander. So, that’s why it’s really been a priority for us to reach as many children as we can — not just with autism, but disabilities as a whole.”

Since Zero Drowning’s launch, child drowning deaths have gone down in Miami-Dade County, as the state of Florida’s deaths have continued to rise, according to O’Connor. In 2025, a record-breaking 112 children died due to drownings throughout the state. 

“We want to teach as many kids as we possibly can across the county,” O’Connor said. “… And the reason why [Zero Drowning] works is because it really is a partnership, between governmental, nonprofit and private [stakeholders] trying to bring everybody together for a common cause and then having the right people in the right leadership that can be our champions.” 

Miami-Dade County’s Zero Drownings initiative was the 2025 NACo Achievement Award “Best in Category” winner in Children and Youth.