Who is more likely to smoke during pregnancy in the Netherlands?

Smoking during pregnancy is a risk factor for various adverse birth outcomes. In order to develop and target interventions to reduce smoking during pregnancy, insight is needed into the characteristics associated with pregnant women who smoke. In a study we just published in PLOS ONE with Ruth Baron as first author we looked at associations of thirteen socio-demographic or lifestyle-related characteristics with ‘any smoking’, ‘daily smoking’ and ‘occasional smoking’ during pregnancy. Our study sample was drawn from the DELIVER study, a cohort of 6107 pregnant women in primary care in the Netherlands who were up to 34 weeks pregnant. Characteristics most strongly associated with any smoking were low education, being of Turkish ethnicity and having no partner. Women of Dutch ethnicity were three times more likely to smoke than those from Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries and non-religious women were much more likely to smoke than religious women. Daily smokers were more likely to be associated with other unfavorable lifestyle-related characteristics, such as not taking folic acid, being underweight, and having had an unplanned pregnancy. There is still much potential for health gain with respect to smoking during pregnancy in the Netherlands. Daily and occasional smokers appear to differ in characteristics, and therefore possibly require different interventions.