Teachable moments: Helping parents quit smoking at the pediatrician's office
Smoking bans that protect people from secondhand smoke in public spaces or at work don't do much for the most vulnerable population: children at home or in the family car.
To encourage parents to quit, Massachusetts General Hospital wants
pediatricians to deliver an anti-smoking message to parents during a child's regular checkups.
Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff and his colleagues in the Clinical Effort Against Secondhand Smoke Exposure, or CEASE, explain how they came up with the plan in the current Journal of Pediatrics. They tested the program among eight pediatric practices in the Boston area and presented it at national meetings.
It borrows from QuitWorks, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health program to help people stop smoking that includes telephone counseling and recommends medications to ease the withdrawal from tobacco.
The Mass. General group adapted the screening questionnaire and methods for charting the parent's smoking, attempts to quit, and prescriptions to help them succeed.
"This program is now available for everyone to use, and the science behind it is compelling," Winickoff said in a statement. "I hope that every child healthcare office in the country adopts the program so that every family can become tobacco-free."
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Elizabeth Cooney is a former
health reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where she also was a
business reporter and an editor. Earlier in her career, she edited medical
books and journals at Little, Brown, and worked for Boston magazine.Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
- Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor
- Ishani Ganguli, Short White Coat blogger
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