Despite general community wide efforts to curtail smoking and reduce environmental tobacco smoke exposure, smoking among pregnant women in an upstate New York county remains at over 18% while smoking among pregnant women on Medicaid exceeds 50%. Under the auspices of a local Perinatal Network and Healthy Start program a coalition representing constituencies interested in reducing smoking among pregnant and parenting women was formed in December 1998. The presentation will describe the progress, successes and lessons learned from this unique coalition building process. Coalition members included clinical, human services, perinatal outreach, community centers, insurers, smoking cessation researchers, the local health department and cancer/lung professional associations. Monthly meetings provide a venue for information sharing, development of goals and priorities and development of a model/approach to use community-wide. This work also provided the foundation to seek external funding. In general, although members were committed to a common cause, the group did not coalesce easily. Views on how to achieve inroads in this population varied dramatically as individuals with smoking cessation program experience clashed with individuals who worked more closely with the population in question. In addition, responses to our attempts to engage the providers in this issue were mixed. The success of the coalition to date is based on the mutual respect that developed for each individual's expertise and understanding that even the experts had things to learn. The Coalition will be ending its second year of work at the time of this presentation.
Learning Objectives: 1. Describe the unique attributes of a community coalition. 2. Outline a community model for smoking cessation for pregnant/parenting women 3. List lessons learned and strategies achieve successful coalition building
Keywords: Smoking Cessation, Coalition
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.