Quitting smoking is the most important action a pregnant woman can take to ensure the health of her baby. The U. S. Surgeon General has reported that eliminating smoking during pregnancy could prevent 10% of all infant deaths and 12% of all deaths due to perinatal conditions.
As a health care provider, you now have an enormous opportunity to improve the health of mothers and their babies by helping pregnant smokers quit. An easy-to-implement, evidence-based clinical counseling approach has been recently developed and can double or even triplequit rates among pregnant smokers. This approach has been published by the U. S. Public Health Service in its Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence Clinical Practice Guideline, and by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The approach is effective for most pregnant smokers, including low-income women, the group most likely to smoke during pregnancy.
More about the counseling approach
Learn How
There are a number of resources to help you learn how to making smoking cessation counseling a routine part of prenatal care.
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Resources
A variety of resources are available for care professionals...
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Facts About Smoking and Pregnancy
Learn more about the effects of smoking on your body....
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Best Methods to Quit
An easy-to-implement, evidence-based clinical counseling approach, the "5 A's", has been recently developed...
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