Financial Incentives Effective Way to Help Pregnant Women Stop Smoking: Study

A new study finds financial incentives can be an effective way to help pregnant women quit smoking.

Pregnant women who were offered up to $1,200 in shopping vouchers for following steps to become smoke free were more than twice as likely to stop smoking as women who were given free nicotine therapy and counseling.

The researchers, writing in BMJ, say financial incentives “may well have the future potential to sit with vaccines as an important preventive healthcare intervention strategy.”

The study included more than 600 pregnant women in the United Kingdom, Time reports. Almost one-quarter of women who were offered the shopping vouchers successfully quit smoking, compared with less than 9 percent of women who received free nicotine therapy and counseling.

After a year, 15 percent of women who received shopping vouchers were still smoke free, compared with 4 percent of those who received nicotine therapy and counseling.

“In the developed world there is now a clear socioeconomic gradient in smoking, with tobacco use concentrated among the poorest in society,” the researchers wrote. “Receipt of financial incentives can contribute to needed household income in advance of the arrival of a baby in low income households.”