Economic analysis of financial incentives for smoking cessation during pregnancy and postpartum.

Higgins and colleagues' recently-completed randomized controlled trial and pooled data with 4 related trials of smoking cessation in pregnant women in Vermont (USA) showed that abstinence-contingent financial incentives (FI) increased abstinence over control conditions from early pregnancy through 24-weeks postpartum. Control conditions were best practices (BP) alone in the recent trial and payments provided independent of smoking status (noncontingently) in the others. This paper reports economic analyses of abstinence-contingent FI.

Randomized Controlled Trial Examining the Efficacy of Adding Financial Incentives to Best practices for Smoking Cessation Among pregnant and Newly postpartum Women.

We report results from a single-blinded randomized controlled trial examining financial incentives for smoking cessation among 249 pregnant and newly postpartum women. Participants included 169 women assigned to best practices (BP) or BP plus financial incentives (BP + FI) for smoking cessation available through 12-weeks postpartum. A third condition included 80 never-smokers (NS) sociodemographically-matched to women who smoked.

Vermont's comprehensive public health framework for tobacco control and prevention.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the Best Practices Guide for Comprehensive Tobacco Control - 2014 it provided an opportunity for Vermont's Tobacco Control Program to create a new state plan. Bringing together partner agencies, advocates and health organizations, the workgroup faced a challenge: there wasn't consensus around focusing on e-cigarettes. There was concern that if too much emphasis was placed on addressing this emerging product, it would be at the cost of reducing combustible use.

A Framework for Effective Promotion of a Medicaid Tobacco Cessation Benefit.

Tobacco burden is significantly greater among those insured by Medicaid, with a smoking prevalence about twice as high as the national average (28% vs. 15%). Over the past decade, smoking prevalence among those insured by Medicaid has remained relatively unchanged while overall smoking prevalence in the United States and among other insurance groups decreased.