Short communicationPerceived barriers to and benefits of attending a stop smoking course during pregnancy
Introduction
Behavioural support is effective for smoking cessation during pregnancy [1] and pregnant smokers express a high level of interest in this support [2]. However, the level of uptake of this type of support is very low [3], [4], [5]. For example, only around 5% of pregnant smokers make use of stop smoking courses which are available free in the UK [5]. It has been suggested that, among pregnant smokers, barriers to attending stop smoking courses are not being adequately identified and addressed [2]. The present study involved an Internet-based survey to assess perceived barriers to and benefits of attending a stop smoking course during pregnancy.
Section snippets
Methods
An Internet-based questionnaire was posted on a smoking cessation website (see http://www.stop-tabac.ch/en/preg/) and was linked to websites addressing smoking cessation and/or pregnancy. The questionnaire targeted those who were both pregnant and a smoker or recent ex-smoker (<month since daily smoking). Increasingly larger numbers of people have access to the Internet. In 2005, 61% of women in the USA had Internet access [6]. While in the UK, in 2004, 53% of UK adults had Internet access at
Results
Between October 2003 and August 2004 the questionnaire was completed by 491 pregnant smokers or ex-smokers. Across an arbitrary 3-month period, May–July 2004, the link to the barriers and benefits questionnaire was clicked 2393 times and across the same period 305 pregnant smokers completed the questionnaire. This represents a response rate of 13%. However, it was not possible to estimate the response rate among pregnant smokers as many of those deciding not to complete the questionnaire may
Discussion
The present study is the first to explore pregnant smokers’ perceived barriers to and perceived benefits of attending stop smoking courses. The findings suggest that the majority of pregnant smokers perceive many benefits of attending a stop smoking course. However, only 5–6% of respondents indicated that they had attended a cessation course, during a previous or current pregnancy, and many women reported not having access to these courses or not believing that such courses help. In addition,
Conclusions
Despite the low uptake of smoking cessation courses during pregnancy, in the present study the vast majority of pregnant smokers agreed that there were many benefits of such courses. However, these women also perceived many barriers to uptake of smoking cessation courses. Studies are needed to relate perceived/barriers benefits to actual attendance at stop smoking courses during pregnancy and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions which attempt to overcome the barriers to uptake of
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