Pediatric visits can encourage parents to quit smoking

Medscape turned to a University of Cincinnati professor of human services for her opinion about a new study that suggests pediatric visits can help encourage parents to quit smoking.

UC College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services Professor Ashley Merianos has been studying ways to prevent the use of tobacco and other substances as a certified specialist in health education and tobacco treatment.

In a study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers with the University of Pennsylvania found that mothers who reported smoking in a routine pediatric screening questionnaire and were offered automated support through their child's electronic health record were nearly 12% more likely to quit smoking than parents who were not invited to share their smoking habits with their pediatrician.

Lead researcher Brian Jenssen said parents who routinely bring their children in for medical checkups might be far less likely to seek routine medical care for themselves. As a result, the pediatric visits coud present a good opportunity for doctors to intervene.

“Our research shows that framing this around helping their child is very motivational,“ Jenssen told Medscape.

UC's Merianos and her students have been studying related questions about smoking cessation and interventions. Most recently, she has been investigating how divorce, financial hardship, community violence and other adverse childhood experiences are tied to tobacco use in children’s households.

Merianos told Medscape that addressing the tobacco use of caregivers through pediatric care is an effective way to prevent harm in children.

“This electronic record-based system takes something that can easily be missed during pediatric health care visits and makes it routine,” Merianos told Medscape. “Although parents are not the patients, their tobacco use can directly affect their children’s health.”

Read the Medscape story.

Featured image at top: UC Professor Ashley Merianos discussed a recent study in the journal Pediatrics that found pediatric visits to be an effective way to encourage parents to quit smoking. Photo/Pixelimage