Among the most joyous sounds of summer time are the excessive pitched squeals of enjoyment produced by Philly’s kids as they play in our metropolis’s outside swimming pools. The water that embraces and cools off our kids is refreshing, exhilarating, and therapeutic, and every open pool, every jubilant soundwave piercing the air, provides a group hope that their metropolis has not deserted them. But it surely appears, as soon as once more, it has.
The historical past of the well being advantages of swimming and sunshine return hundreds of years, and nonetheless has its stamp on establishments such because the Seashore House at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Metropolis swimming pools provide protected, energetic, enjoyable areas, that may assist mediate a few of the most intractable public well being points in Philadelphia akin to weight problems and violence, as Inquirer columnist Helen Ubinas lately wrote. The bodily, psychological, and social advantages of swimming are nicely documented, and as all of us are slowly rising from the pandemic, the stress discount advantages are wanted now greater than ever.
Final yr, the American Academy of Pediatrics revealed a coverage assertion on preventing childhood toxic stress, emphasizing the function of constructive experiences in selling well being in childhood and stopping grownup illness. Embracing kids with constructive experiences is among the most vital investments in a group’s well being. Swimming pools have been part of this answer in Philadelphia since 1883.
However with a worsening lifeguard scarcity, lower than half of our metropolis’s swimming pools will open this summer time, as hearth hydrants and blow up swimming pools sitting on concrete will once more be a reminder of our metropolis’s indifference to weak communities that deserve investments essentially the most.
The town is providing free lifeguard training and very competitive wages, for these 16 and up, however competitors from different industries, and even the notion of our protected areas not feeling so protected, are making recruitment very tough.
The disaster consists of each outside swimming pools and the indoor services that must be out there all yr lengthy. Within the final decade, 4 out of 5 of Philadelphia’s remaining indoor public swimming pools have closed: Hartranft, in North Philly’s center college of the identical title; Sayre-Morris, at Sayre Excessive College in West Philly; Carousel Home’s pool in Fairmount Park for individuals with disabilities; and Pickett, at Mastery Pickett in Germantown. The one indoor public pool open now, for our entire metropolis, is at Lincoln Excessive College in Mayfair, nicely past the final cease on the El.
It isn’t too late to repair closed swimming pools, fill them, and put them to work coaching future lifeguards. Clearly, connmunities need them, as Kristin Graham’s current article on efforts to reopen the Sayre-Morris indoor pool in Cobbs Creek illustrates.
As a pediatrician in North Philly, actually a “pool deserts,” I’ve tried to raise this difficulty of public well being and fairness, by beginning an Instagram effort known as @noclosedpools2022 to get the phrase out to pediatricians and little one advocates. I additionally, emailed each highschool and faculty swim coach within the space about this urgent difficulty, to get their experience, their swimmers, and their swim communities concerned, with no response.
All of those points, and the opportunity of having lower than a 3rd of metropolis swimming pools open this summer time, comes at a time when POOL: A Social History of Segregation, has simply opened on the Fairmount Water Works. This free exhibit addresses the connection between water, social justice and public well being, particularly how previous and current racial discrimination at swimming swimming pools, coupled with a common shift of funds away from public swimming pools, has had a major and lasting affect on Black communities.
An African proverb states “the kid who shouldn’t be embraced by the village, will burn it down, to really feel its heat.” We should do higher for the proverbial little one. We should put money into each the indoor swimming pools that assist practice our future lifeguards, in addition to be sure that all swimming pools are opened for our metropolis, or we are going to proceed to really feel the burn of our kids’s neglect.
Daniel R. Taylor, D.O., is medical director of the outpatient middle at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Kids.
