SynthesisFrontiers in public health2025
Basic swimming or water safety skills training for drowning prevention in children: an updated systematic review.
Synthesis in Frontiers in public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Impact of assistive tool-based training on anxiety, mental focus, and self-confidence among university swimming students.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Child drownings constitute a major cause of mortality from unintentional injury worldwide. In 2021, the WHO issued a strong recommendation in favour of basic swimming skills and water safety training in children to prevent drowning. The systematic review conducted in support of this guideline, however, revealed evidence of overall very low certainty and illustrated a number of research gaps. Here, the evidence from this systematic review was updated. Methods: Five scientific databases (PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, ERIC) and two clinical trial registers (clinicaltrails.gov, WHO ICTRP) were searched for controlled experimental and observational studies. Interventions delivering basic swimming skills or water safety in children under the age of 18 years were included. Outcomes of interest included drowning-related mortality and morbidity, and water safety skills, knowledge and behaviour. Certainty of the evidence was appraised using the GRADE methodology. Results: A total of 33 studies were included, of which 21 were previously included in the original review and 12 were newly identified in the current update. Studies delivered either basic swimming skills (18 studies), isolated water safety training (6 studies), water safety training as part of an injury prevention programme (5 studies) or an intervention combining swimming and water safety (4 studies). Certainty of the evidence ranged from high to very low. Conclusion: Swim training may reduce drowning-related mortality and increase water safety skills in children. The used pedagogical approach (focus on familiarization and motor awareness), mode of delivery (using video-taped feedback) and setting (shallow water) may be determining factors for swimming skills acquisition. Water safety training is effective to enhance knowledge of and safe behaviour in/around water, and may reduce drowning mortality. These results, highlighting the importance of promoting swimming and water safety skills from an early age onward, could inform public health strategies and guide the development of sustainable interventions in communities at high risk of drowning. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO registration CRD42020167437; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42020167437.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.