PSD Health Initiative

The Public Safety Diving (PSD) Health Survey has been launched by the San Diego Center of Excellence in Diving as a result of the January 2015 PSD meeting convened in San Diego. The aim of this study is to understand the acute and chronic health issues affecting the public safety diving community. A major contributing factor to health issues identified by the majority of PSD training organizations was the not fully encapsulated nature of diving activities that may have exposed dive team members to direct contact with microbial- or chemical-contaminants in the water column or sediments.

There are two phases to this study. Phase 1 is to gather and analyze data that will allow the approximation of the population size of PSD in the U.S. and the magnitude of acute or chronic health issues. This information will be supplied by DIVE TEAM LEADERS.

Phase 2 will be launched upon completion of Phase 1 and be made universally available for individual PSD team divers to enter information in a completely anonymous manner. This information will allow PSD health issue trend analysis and more detailed causes and solutions to be identified.

A final report will be made available on the www.dive.ucsd.edu website with accessibility by PSD training organizations, dive team leaders and individual divers. ​We also stand by to answer any specific questions from the PSD community. There is no objective to provide findings or take a position on specific training standards, equipment preferences or medical certification requirements for the public safety diving community. It is our intent for this collaborative project to be inclusive and to increase and diffuse the knowledge gained to mitigate acute and chronic health issues many public safety divers are currently experiencing.