Pregnant Women continue to Smoke
Published on October 21, 2009 9:55 AM
Normally pregnancy is an exciting event for women who smoke. That’s why scientists tried to understand what’s at the root of the health crisis by studying the smoking among pregnant women.Bob Reid, an expert in smoking cessation and behavior modification, said: "It is actually the single one event in a woman’s life that will more likely lead to quitting than anything else."When Ottawa’s Bob Reid gathered a meeting several years ago to discuss Nunavut’s smoking epidemic, the territory’s health officials, Inuit elders and leaders all shared a canceling interest.
Nunavut’s pregnant mothers smoked too much that’s why men required urgent help."One of the things that were terrible to community members was the levels to which women continued to smoke throughout pregnancy," explained Reid, associate director of the rehabilitation centre at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
But the balance of the epidemic among Nunavut’s expectant mothers is of a different magnitude. Statistics show that up to 80 percent of pregnant women in the territory smoke. These high levels of tobacco use have extreme effects on the health of Nunavut’s infants, who suffer the world’s highest rates of hospitalization for pneumonia, bronchiolitis and other respiratory infections.
After his meeting with Nunavut leaders, Reid searched for studies that demonstrated the smoking behavior of Nunavut’s expectant mothers, and finding none, he began to design his own. Today he leads a team of researchers attempting to understand what’s at the root of the North’s most confounding health crisis."It is actually the single one event in a woman’s life that will more likely lead to quitting than anything else, even more so than a health problem," added Reid. In Nunavut, however, pregnancy does not often urge expectant mothers to quit, that’s why their number is higher than in other countries. But Reid’s team wants to know why and what can be done for to help more pregnant women overcome their smoking addiction.
Researchers are investigated expectant mothers’ attitudes about smoking and pregnancy. They wanted to find the answers at these questions: Do pregnant women believe that smoking will not affect their baby? Do they intend to offer their baby for adoption? Does that decision affect their attitude about smoking? Are they worried about weight gain? Does everyone around them smoke at home?
Unfortunately right now researchers do not have answers. "I think we need to develop a culturally sensitive intervention that combines the best of what we know about how to treat this from clinical experience with something that is sensitive to where women are coming from on this whole thing," explained Reid.
