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2023 SURGEON ADMIRAL FRANK GOLDEN STUDENT

RESEARCH PRIZE

The 2023 student research prize was awarded to American researcher and PhD student
William Koon (USA/Australia).
William Koon is a researcher in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental
Sciences at UNSW Sydney with an interest in coastal hazards, drowning and injury
epidemiology, and prevention science. He spent over a decade working as a professional
ocean lifeguard in California and continues to volunteer with Surf Life Saving Australia
in Sydney. William is a founding board member of the California Water Safety Coalition,
the inaugural Ben Carlson Memorial Doctoral Research Fellow, a collaborating member
of the International Drowning Research Alliance, and co-founder of the UNSW Beach
Safety Research Group.

Brief outline on how the research adds to current drowning knowledge.

The driving motivation for my PhD thesis is to advance the science of coastal drowning
prevention, systematically identifying and subsequently filling knowledge gaps in the
field. As a whole, the thesis can be characterised as a mixed-methods multidisciplinary
effort to provide a robust foundation for the design and implementation of interventions
that aim to reduce the occurrence and burden of drowning in coastal spaces. To this
end, the research is divided into three parts: scoping review, epidemiology, and
prevention. First, the entire research effort is framed in light of an expansive scoping
review of coastal drowning science that describes what is known from peer reviewed
literature in regards to burden, risk factors, and prevention strategies (Koon et al.,
2021). This scoping review represents the first and most in depth effort to characterise
the coastal drowning prevention literature as a whole, and identified several gaps and
future challenges for the prevention of coastal drowning.
Inspired by knowledge gaps identified in Part One, Part Two addresses three understudied areas of coastal
drowning epidemiology in the Australian context: 2.1) analysis accounting for exposure to water and
participation in specific coastal activities (manuscript currently under review); 2.2) evaluation of the role of
tidal cycles in surf beach drowning risk (manuscript currently under review); and 2.3) the comparative burden
and risk factors of international tourist coastal fatalities compared to residents (manuscript currently under
review). These three works involve a range of epidemiological and statistical methods, the results of which are
interpreted with strong emphasis on practice and policy implementation in the public health, ocean safety, and
tourism management domains. These works provide new information to coastal safety stakeholders, both in
Australia and globally, on who is at risk, how to think about who is at risk, and what sort of interventions are
most likely to keep people safe.
The Part One scoping review component also identified major gaps in coastal safety program evaluation, so Part
Three of the thesis focuses on prevention, specifically the design and evaluation of 3.1) school-based beach
safety programs and 3.2) basic rescue training for surfers. Education is the most frequently recommended
coastal safety intervention, yet, evidence for efficacy is rare in the published literature. Moreover, information
on how to design these programs is non-existent. To address this gap, I worked with local lifeguards and high
school students to co-design a school-based beach safety program (Koon, 2022). Data collection for that
program’s evaluation is currently ongoing (November, 2022), but will be available by the June conference
date. I am also currently working on a multi-component mixed method evaluation of a surfer rescue training
program administered by Surfing New South Wales. The program, Surfers Rescue 24/7, has been in operation
for nearly a decade in Australia, and similar programs now exists in New Zealand, the United States, Chile,
Brazil, and Europe. These programs are innovative and scalable, yet they have not been described in the
peer reviewed literature and no evaluation of their impact exists. Data collection and analysis is ongoing
(November, 2022) and involves a retrospective survey of several hundred program participants, in depth
qualitative interviews with past program participants who have made rescues in New South Wales or New
Zealand, and a pilot pre-post evaluation of the program in New South Wales. These results for part 3.2 of the
thesis will be available by the June 2023 conference date.

References:
Koon, W., Peden, A., Lawes, J. C., & Brander, R. W. (2021). Coastal drowning: A scoping review of burden,
risk factors, and prevention strategies. PLoS one, 16(2), e0246034.
Koon, W., Brander, R. W., Alonzo, D., & Peden, A. E. (2022). Lessons learned from co-designing a high school
beach safety education program with lifeguards and students. Health promotion journal of Australia.