More than half of Americans are unable to meet a basic set of water safety standards, Red Cross stated.
About 54 percent Americans, and two thirds (67 percent) of African-Americans cannot swim, Yahoo News reported.
"Our goal is to cut drowning rates by 50 percent over the next three to five years," Connie Harvey, director of the Red Cross' Aquatics Centennial Initiatives, told Yahoo News during a phone interview.
Being able to swim 25 yards to exit the water, being able to step or jump into water over your head, exiting a pool without using a ladder, floating or treading water for one minute, and making a full circle in the water to find an exit are five categories the define "water competency" for Red Cross.
"It's about knowing where to swim and when to swim," Harvey said. "But also what to do in the event that something goes wrong, teaching people how to perform CPR or perform a rescue without putting themselves in danger."
In order to reach 50,000 individuals, Red Cross is launching training programs in 50 cities across 19 states to achieve that goal. It has also launched a swim app for families that want to track their progress as they learn to swim.
Although 1.3 deaths out of every 100,000 individuals might not sound alarming, the drowning statistics translates to around 3,600 drowning deaths each year, "the vast majority of which are preventable," Harvey said.
About 10 people die while swimming each day.
The initiative will largely be held on areas in the Sun Belt, where warm weather means more people are swimming either in natural bodies of water or in swimming pools, Harvey said.
But they also plan to focus on other cities facing barriers to entry including financial obstacles, or what Harvey described as a simple but powerful "fear of the water," according to Yahoo News.
Drowning rates were nearly 10 times higher than today, 10.4 per 100,000, when the Red Cross launched its first nationwide aquatics awareness initiative.
"Eighty percent of those surveyed by the Red Cross described themselves as capable swimmers, including 84 percent of whites and 69 percent of African-Americans," Yahoo News reported.