Many Lifeguarding techniques, skills and protocols are historically based. The purpose of the United States Lifeguard Standards Coalition is to provide a scientific basis for Lifeguarding and water rescue techniques, skills and protocols. The United States Lifeguard Standards Coalition is a collaborative effort of the American Red Cross, the United States Lifesaving Association and the YMCA of the USA, America’s nonprofit leaders in lifeguard standard-setting and members of the International Lifesaving Federation. Our mission is to research, identify and promote evidence-based standards for Lifeguarding and water rescue. In doing so, we draw on the considerable strengths of our own organizations and other respected nonprofits, while soliciting the input and advice of experts worldwide. The preliminary results of this process will be presented. Dr. David Markenson is the Chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester County Medical Center and is also a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He is a board certified Pediatrician with Fellowship training in both Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Pediatric Critical Care. His career has been dedicated to improving the approach to pediatric care, disaster medicine, EMS and emergency medicine. He has been the primary author or a contributor of numerous articles centered on pediatrics, emergency preparedness, and pediatric critical care. Dr. Markenson holds a number of clinical and academic appointments and serves on a number of national medical committees. He is the former Chair of the NAEMSP Pediatric Committee, has served on the Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine of the American Academy of Pediatrics and is a member of the Regional EMS Council of New York City (NYC) and the Regional Emergency Medical Advisory Committee of NYC. He is the Principal Investigator of multiple federal grants including an EMSC grant to create a Model Pediatric Component for State Disaster Plans, a HRSA grant to develop emergency preparedness education for health professions students and a CDC grant to improve linkages between EMS and Public Health for emergency preparedness. He served as the Conference Chair of the Pediatric Preparedness for Disasters and Terrorism which was a National Consensus conference which produced the only national emergency preparedness guidelines for children. Based on this work he has been awarded a federal grant to develop national emergency preparedness guidelines for persons with disabilities and to revise the previously created pediatric guidelines. Dr. Markenson began his career as a paramedic in college, an area of medicine he still is heavily involved with today. Dr. Markenson has worked in emergency medicine since 1985 and became involved with EMS for Children in 1986. He is the author of the text Pediatric Prehospital Care and authored the National Association of EMS Physicians Model Pediatric Protocols. His extensive involvement with EMS issues includes responding as an active EMS provider, serving as the medical director for several EMS agencies, serving as an adjunct author for the revisions of the National EMS Curricula and conducting several multi-agency research projects.
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