Shopping vouchers incentive for pregnant smokers

The findings were collected from January 2018 to April 2020 evaluating the behaviour of 941 pregnant women from seven stop-smoking services in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.

Using the reward system more than doubled the proportion of participants who were still smoke-free by late pregnancy, compared to those who had only received the usual support from trained workers and free nicotine replacement therapy.

Seventy-one per cent of women who received the incentive engaged with the stop-smoking services and set a quit date - compared to 64 per cent of those receiving the usual support. Saliva tests confirmed that 27 per cent of the women in the voucher group had stopped smoking by late pregnancy compared with only 12 per cent of the control group.