TUESDAY, Sept. 24, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Support from health-care professionals can play an important role in helping low-income pregnant women quit drinking and smoking.
That's the claim of a new study in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"The frequent contacts women have with health professionals during pregnancy may provide valuable opportunities to discuss alcohol and tobacco use and encourage behavior changes," says study author Judith K. Ockene, a professor of medicine and chief of the division of preventive and behavioral medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Smoking and alcohol pose health threats to unborn children.
Ockene and her colleagues studied interviews with 600 pregnant women in the Boston area who were current smokers or had quit when they learned they were pregnant. They were receiving prenatal care from a publicly funded program.
Most of the women were unmarried and more than 40 percent of them had less than a high school education.
The study found the women were more likely (80 percent) to stop drinking than quit smoking (27 percent) when they learned they were pregnant. Pregnant black women were less likely than white or Hispanic women to quit smoking.
The women who quit drinking alcohol when they learned they were pregnant were more likely to have social support. The study says health professionals can fill that gap by providing support to women who don't get if from family and friends.
"It is important for clinicians to be aware of and acknowledge the difficulties these women face, and to help them develop motivation and skills to engage their partners and support systems in their cessation attempts," Ockene says.
Women who didn't quite smoking were more likely to be less educated, have a greater addiction to nicotine, and have a partner who smoked, the study says.
More information
The American Lung Association has more information on smoking and pregnancy and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more on alcohol-related problems.
