No closed pools: Why this Philly doctor wants every city pool open this year | Expert Opinion

Some of the most joyous sounds of summer are the high-pitched squeals of delight produced by Philly’s children as they play in our city’s outdoor pools. The water that embraces and cools off our children is refreshing, exhilarating, and healing, and each open pool, each jubilant sound wave piercing the air, gives a community hope that their city has not abandoned them. But it seems, once again, it has.

The history of the health benefits of swimming and sunshine go back thousands of years, and still has its stamp on institutions such as the Seashore House at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. City pools offer safe, active, fun spaces that can help mediate some of the most intractable public health issues in Philadelphia such as obesity and violence, as Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas recently wrote. The physical, mental, and social benefits of swimming are well-documented, and as we all are slowly emerging from the pandemic, the stress-reduction benefits are needed now more than ever.

Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a policy statement on preventing childhood toxic stress, emphasizing the role of positive experiences in promoting health in childhood and preventing adult disease. Embracing children with positive experiences is one of the most important investments in a community’s health. Pools have been a part of this solution in Philadelphia since 1883.

But with a worsening lifeguard shortage, less than half of our city’s pools will open this summer, as fire hydrants and blow up pools sitting on concrete will again be a reminder of our city’s indifference to vulnerable communities that deserve investments the most.

The city is offering free lifeguard training and very competitive wages, for those 16 and up, but competition from other industries and even the perception of our safe spaces not feeling so safe are making recruitment very difficult.

The crisis includes both outdoor pools and the indoor facilities that should be available all year long. In the last decade, four out of five of Philadelphia’s remaining indoor public pools have closed: Hartranft, in North Philly’s middle school of the same name; Sayre-Morris Recreation Center in West Philly; Carousel House’s pool in Fairmount Park for people with disabilities; and Pickett, at Mastery Pickett in Germantown. The only indoor public pool open now, for our whole city, is at Lincoln High School in Mayfair, well beyond the last stop on the El.

It is not too late to fix closed pools, fill them, and put them to work training future lifeguards. Obviously, communities want them, as Kristin Graham’s recent article on efforts to reopen the Sayre-Morris indoor pool in Cobbs Creek illustrates.

As a pediatrician in North Philly, certainly a “pool desert,” I have tried to elevate this issue of public health and equity, by starting an Instagram effort called @noclosedpools2022 to get the word out to pediatricians and child advocates. I also emailed every high school and college swim coach in the area about this pressing issue, to get their expertise, their swimmers, and their swim communities involved, with no response.

All of these issues, and the possibility of having less than a third of city pools open this summer, come at a time when POOL: A Social History of Segregation has just opened at the Fairmount Water Works. This free exhibit addresses the connection between water, social justice, and public health, especially how past and present racial discrimination at swimming pools, coupled with a general shift of funds away from public pools, has had a significant and lasting impact on Black communities.

An African proverb states, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down, to feel its warmth.” We must do better for the proverbial child. We must invest in both the indoor pools that help train our future lifeguards, as well as ensure that all pools are opened for our city, or we will continue to feel the burn of our children’s neglect.

Daniel R. Taylor, D.O., is medical director of the outpatient center at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.