Since late 2012 the North East of England has rolled-out “babyClear” across its localities, in order to tackle the unacceptably high levels of smoking during pregnancy. Fresh, the dedicated North East office of tobacco control has overseen the implementation of this systematic approach to helping pregnant women quit, along with the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre. We now have early evaluation results from academic partners, and significant anecdotal learning from this programme of work.
Whilst North East SATOD rates remain high (17.9% in Q3 2014/15), these have fallen by 2% on the same period in 2012/13, and NE maternal smoking rates have dropped by twice the national average over that time. We have also seen the number of pregnant women accessing SSS to quit since 2012/13 hold steady despite an overall decline in service throughput from the general population of more than 40%.
This session will highlight some of the lesson learnt from implementing a regional approach to tackling smoking in pregnancy, as well as looking at the different approaches to SSS provision across the North East. It aims to inform attendees of pitfalls/opportunities from this approach, and the importance of system-wide collaboration.
Source of funding: BabyClear funding came from Fresh as part of its Local Authority commissioned tobacco control budget, and from the North East Strategic Health Authority sustainable project funding
