JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Comparative Study
Comparing the prevalence of smoking in pregnant and nonpregnant women, 1985 to 1986.
The 1990 health objectives for the nation state that pregnant women should be only half as likely to smoke as nonpregnant women. To assess progress toward meeting this objective, we used cross-sectional data from the 26 states in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 1985 and 1986. We compared the prevalence of self-reported smoking among pregnant (N = 836) and nonpregnant (N = 18,025) women aged 18 to 45 years. ⋯ However, unmarried pregnant white women were 40% more likely to smoke than their nonpregnant counterparts (prevalence ratio, 1.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.1 to 1.7). We conclude from this analysis that the 1990 health objective for smoking among pregnant women is unlikely to be achieved. Clinicians providing care to pregnant women need to pay increased attention to smoking cessation.
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Trends in the prevalence, initiation, and cessation of cigarette smoking are reported for the US population using weighted and age-standardized data from seven National Health Interview Surveys (1974 to 1985). The decline in prevalence was linear, with the prevalence for men decreasing at 0.91 percentage points per year to 33.5% in 1985 and the prevalence for women decreasing at 0.33 percentage points per year to 27.6% in 1985. For whites the rate of decline (percentage points per year) was 0.57, to 29.4% in 1985, and for blacks the decline was 0.67, to 35.6% in 1985. ⋯ Smoking initiation decreased among young men (-1.03), while it remained about the same in young women (+0.11). Initiation decreased at a more rapid rate in blacks (-1.02) than in whites (-0.35). We conclude that smoking prevalence is decreasing across all race-gender groups, although at a slower rate for women than men, and that differences in initiation, more than cessation, are primarily responsible for the converging of smoking prevalence rates among men and women.