Jayce The Healer Foundation presents ‘Walk This Way!’

Posted 5/12/16

The time to eradicate drowning is now. The weather is warming up, and water is tempting and unforgiving.

Drowning can literally happen to anyone, and within seconds. Drowning claims the lives of …

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Jayce The Healer Foundation presents ‘Walk This Way!’

Posted

The time to eradicate drowning is now. The weather is warming up, and water is tempting and unforgiving.

Drowning can literally happen to anyone, and within seconds. Drowning claims the lives of approximately 760 children per year. It is the second leading cause of death in children between the ages of one and 14. Drowning is preventable, but only if individuals and families are given the information and tools necessary to prevent it.

The Jayce The Healer Foundation will host its first annual water safety 5k walk “Walk This Way! Taking Steps to Prevent Childhood Drowning.” The walk will take place at Roger Williams Park at the Carousel Village on Sunday, May 15.

The walk will be a family-friendly event that not only promotes the importance of water safety awareness and drowning prevention, but remembers those lost to drowning accidents and survivors of near drownings.

Registration for the walk is $12. Additional information about the walk and pre-registration can be found at fundraising.active.com/event/WalkThisWay_TakingStepsTo.

With May being National Water Safety Month, the Jayce the Healer Foundation would like to remind families that:

Drowning occurs quickly and silently. A child can drown in seconds and they cannot cry out for help. They lose consciousness within two minutes under water. Permanent brain damage occurs after four to six minutes.

For every child who drowns, two are hospitalized for near-drowning. Up to 20 percent of survivors suffer permanent brain damage, and 15 percent of those children hospitalized for near-drowning die in the hospital. Each year in the U.S., over 200 children under age five drown in home swimming pools. Most children who drown in these swimming pools were last seen inside the home, or had been out of sight for less than five minutes and in the care of one or both parents at the time of the drowning.

The suction of a pool or spa drain can trap people underwater. The suction force is too strong for anyone to free themselves. Even several onlookers may not be able to lift a child off a drain. To break that suction would be like lifting more than 500 pounds.

Jayce Sherman-Chattelle was 18 months old when he lost his life in a backyard pool drowning on July 3, 2014. In Jayce’s memory, the Jayce The Healer Foundation, was established. By turning tragedy into advocacy, Karla Sherman founded Jayce the Healer Foundation to prevent this tragedy from happening to another family. The foundation’s mission is to educate children, teens, young adults, their parents, and caregivers about water safety through the utilization of drowning prevention campaigns and water safety training.

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