Local health units look to cut down on prenatal smoking

By Christine Hosler

Photo Illustration: Hasting & Prince Edward County has a 30 per cent prenatal smoking rate, the highest in Ontario. Local health units are teaming up to try and give women more opportunites to quit.

Hastings and Prince Edward County has the highest rate of prenatal smoking in Ontario, and local health units are trying to do something about it.

“A lot of women find when they’re pregnant or have newborns they have new motivation to quit,” said Kristina Chadwick, a health promoter with the Hasting & Prince Edward Counties Health Unit.

According to the health unit, Hastings and Prince Edward County has a 30 per cent prenatal smoking rate, which is double the provincial rate. Peterborough County also has a higher than average rate at 24 per cent.

Chadwick said the general population in the area also has a higher rate of smoking than average.

To find out what women need to help them quit, the health unit partnered with Echo: Improving Women’s Health in Ontario and held a clinic on November 24. Nine women from the area participated in the workshop, where they brainstormed ideas about what they’d need to quit smoking.

“It’s a new idea, asking them what they want,” said Chadwick.

So far this year the Hasting & Prince Edward Counties Health Unit has had 84 referrals from the area for women who want help quitting. Numbers from the health unit show 23 per cent of women who stay in the program quit smoking, and 77 per cent cut down on how much they smoke.

“We want them to build their own program,” said Shelley Cleverly, director of knowledge translation at Echo. “The programs are unique, but based in the research.”

Things like ongoing personalized support groups, availability of nicotine replacement products, feedback from health care professionals, incentives and alternative methods were all ideas the women came up with during the seminar.

“It’s actually a lifestyle change,” said Cleverly. “Women who smoke often have a social circle with other women or people who smoke. It’s a hard thing to walk away from.”

According to Chadwick, the health unit comes up with a policy brief out of the results from the session. It then sends it on to health care providers, as well as the government, hoping they’ll put what women have asked for into use.