Health care coalition begins push to end smoking during pregnancy

Group advocates additional clinical intervention beyond current standard practice.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Jan. 15, 2001.

A consortium of government agencies and medical organizations is launching a new campaign advocating additional physician involvement in helping pregnant patients who smoke to quit.

The goal is to reduce the number of low-birth-weight babies and increase the overall health of infants in accordance with the Public Health Service's Healthy People 2010 initiative, which aims to reduce smoking during pregnancy to 2%. The current rate is about 13%.

"Doctors are crucial," said Doris Barnette, principal adviser to the administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration. "We have an evidence-based intervention that has a good chance of helping women to quit, and it's doable." Her office will direct the campaign to the public "safety net" clinics that see many poor women.

The campaign is backed by the American Assn. of Health Plans, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Assn. of Maternal and Child Health Programs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many other agencies.

The consortium is working to increase the number of physicians and other health care professionals who give smoking cessation counseling and treatment in a five- to 15-minute initial intervention with follow-up care.

Current practice and recommendations include asking pregnant patients if they smoke and advocating that they stop. But many physicians never tell their patients how or monitor their progress. Just over half of ob-gyns discuss cessation strategies and a little over a third provide self-help quitting materials, according to a recent ACOG survey. [...]