Fiscal incentives help pregnant women quit smoking

December 07, 2021 11:36

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Pregnant women are more likely to stop smoking if they are offered financial incentives as part of a treatment plan, research shows.

The study has been published in the 'BMJ Journal'.

The results showed that rewarding women for their smoking abstinence with vouchers throughout their pregnancy was associated with an increase in the continuous abstinence rate compared with no vouchers.

Stopping smoking is crucial to a healthier mother and baby, yet evidence suggested that less than half of women who are daily smokers successfully quit during pregnancy.

Previous studies of financial incentives had shown promising results, but have not yet been put into practice.

So a team of researchers in France decided to assess the effectiveness of progressively higher financial incentives dependent on continuous smoking abstinence on stopping smoking and birth outcomes among pregnant smokers.

Their findings were based on 460 pregnant smokers (average age 29 years) at 18 maternity wards in France who were randomly assigned to either a financial incentives group (231 women) or a control group (229 women) when they were less than 18 weeks into their pregnancy.

During six 10 minute face-to-face visits, all participants were encouraged to set a quit date; given motivational counselling; and support to prevent relapse. Participants in the control group received a Euro 20 voucher at the end of each visit, but abstinence was not rewarded, so the maximum amount a participant could earn was Euro 120 after six visits. -- ANI

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