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Protecting Children from Second-Hand Smoke

Pediatric office visits are an opportunity to counsel smoking parents about changing their behavior.

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is associated with many adverse prenatal and postnatal conditions during childhood. These researchers evaluated whether pediatricians and family practitioners are screening for parental smoking and counseling parents about the dangers of ETS to their children. Assuming that parents take children for healthcare visits more often than they visit their own physicians, the authors reasoned that child health visits are an excellent opportunity to counsel parents on the hazards of ETS. They surveyed a random sample of 3566 respondents, weighted to represent the U.S. population, by telephone between July and September 2001; 3002 (84%) completed the survey.

The children of 902 respondents had been cared for by pediatricians (62%) or family medicine physicians (38%) during the previous year. About half of these parents had been asked about their tobacco use. Parents who visited pediatricians were significantly more likely than those who visited family practitioners to have been queried about rules prohibiting smoking in the home (38% vs. 29%). Fewer than half of the 190 parent smokers reported having been counseled about the dangers of secondhand smoke or given advice to quit.

Comment: Clinicians should screen parents for smoking, even as early as at prenatal visits, and should discuss the prohibition of smoking in the home and elsewhere. By reinforcing awareness of the dangers of parental smoking, we can benefit children and adolescents and help smoking parents to quit.

— Elizabeth R. McAnarney, MD

Published in Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine January 5, 2004

Citation(s):

Winickoff JP et al. Addressing parental smoking in pediatrics and family practice: A national survey of parents. Pediatrics 2003 Nov; 112:1146-51.

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