Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, July 04, 2008
Pregnant women in local counties are still lighting up
Smoking during pregnancy is still a major health problem in the La Crosse area.
Juneau and Jackson counties have the highest rate of smoking during pregnancy of area counties — more than 20 percent, which is worse than the state average, according to the last available data, from 2005.
Monroe County had the third highest rate at 15.77 percent. La Crosse and Crawford counties had rates of more than 15 percent.
“Having a low rate of prenatal care in the first trimester is strongly related to having a high rate of smoking during pregnancy,” said Brenda Rooney, an epidemiologist and Gundersen Lutheran’s medical director of community and preventive services.
Rooney also said smoking during pregnancy is related to low birthweight babies.
“We’ve made some progress from 20 years ago, but right now we’re stable, and we’ve not seen fewer women smoking during pregnancy in the last seven years,” she said.
Rooney said the smoking rate among pregnant women in La Crosse County was better than the state average from 1998 to 2001 but has been the same or worse than the state average since 2002.
The smoking rate among pregnant women in Minnesota and in Houston and Winona counties is lower than Wisconsin for the most part, she said.
Vernon County’s rates have dropped from more than 15 percent in 2003 to 9 percent in 2005.
“There’s a lot of variability in Trempealeau County’s data,” Rooney said. “Some years it’s higher than the state, and some years it’s the same or lower.”
The smoking rate during pregnancy is only a small part of the data available on the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium’s Scorecard Web site, one of the first of its kind in the country.
Since March 2007, the consortium has been operating the scorecard online at www.lmhscscorecard.com, where visitors can find health and demographic information for 20 La Crosse-area counties.
As chairwoman of the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium’s Population Health Committee, Rooney has been responsible for developing the project.
Rooney said she is surprised the smoking rates among pregnant women have not seen a bigger decrease.
“That speaks to the severity of the addiction,” Rooney said.
The La Crosse County Health Department has received a March of Dimes grant to try to find out what pregnant women want or need to help them stop smoking and stay smoke-free.
This month, focus groups of pregnant woman and new moms who smoke will try to help health care providers understand what resources are needed, said Paula Silha, health department health educator.
“We really want to know what might motivate pregnant smokers to quit, and then use those ideas in our strategic planning,” Silha said. “Right now, we don’t know what works.”
When pregnant women smoke, their babies get less oxygen, which can cause the babies to grow more slowly and gain less weight in the womb, she said. Smoking during pregnancy also has been linked to preterm labor, stillbirths and other pregnancy complications, Silha said.
“We also have to get pregnant women to quit for themselves, and not just for the baby,” Silha said.
The La Crosse County Health Department also has received a grant to help provide tobacco cessation services to women between the ages of 18 and 44 at worksites.
More and more hospitals and public health agencies in Wisconsin are targeting pregnant smokers in their smoking cessation efforts. Some have adopted First Breath, a program offered by the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation that helps pregnant women in Wisconsin quit smoking.
Women, Infants and Children program, Franciscan Skemp and Gundersen Lutheran have the First Breath program.
Kathi Volden, a Gundersen Lutheran obstetrics nurse, said nurses have been trained to look at the habits of pregnant women and help them make changes including smoking cessation.
“Being pregnant can be an incentive for women to quit smoking, and often times when I see them, they have already quit,” Volden said. “For those who continue to smoke, we try to get them motivated and thinking about quitting.”
Volden said the only help available during pregnancy is counseling and support.
“My observations are they are very afraid to quit because they think they can’t do it and don’t want to fail,” she said. “They do realize the consequences. Some try to quit and just can’t.”
Dr. Karen Cowan, a family medicine physician at Franciscan Skemp’s Family Health Clinic, said doctors talk openly about smoking and pregnancy with patients.
“We address smoking during pregnancy at every visit,” Cowan said. “It’s part of intake like taking blood pressure. It’s also addressed in pre-conception counseling.
Some pregnant women cut down on the number of cigarettes, she said. “We try to bring up the dose thing because four cigarettes are better than two packs,” Cowan said.
Cowan said Franciscan Skemp will soon start a tobacco cessation program.
“From a health-care perspective, we intervene during pregnancy, but we lose them after pregnancy,” Rooney said. “We need to take more of a community approach than a health-care approach.”
Terry Rindfleisch can be reached at trindfleisch@lacrossetribune.com, or (608) 791-8227
JOIN A FOCUS GROUP
What: La Crosse County Health Department needs pregnant women and new moms who smoke or recently quit to participate in a focus group to help health-care providers determine what women want or need to help them stop smoking and stay quit.
SESSIONS: The sessions are two hours. For those currently pregnant, July 22-24; for new moms, July 23-24. Call (608) 785-9854 to sign up, and for session times.
PARTICIPANTS: Will get free child care, a meal and $40 in gift cards to Festival Foods and Kwik Trip
CHECK IT OUT
To check out more data by counties for smoking and pregnancy, prenatal care, teen pregnancy and low birthweight babies, go to the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium’s Scorecard Web site at www.lmhsc scorecard.com.
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