First report from the Plunket National Child Health Study: smoking during pregnancy in New Zealand

Abstract

The Plunket National Child Health Study is a 5-year longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 4285 children born in New Zealand during 1990-1991. This paper describes the major lines of epidemiological research, the methods and study design, and reports on the demographic data of New Zealand children. During this first report from the Plunket Child Health Study, we examine on the smoking rates of New Zealand mothers during pregnancy. Overall 33% of mothers smoked during pregnancy. Particularly high rates were found amongst teenage mothers,. Maori women, single women and women with lower educational levels. Over 60% of women in these categories smoked during pregnancy.

Maternal education and risk factors for sudden death in infants

“…Parental resistance was mainly apparent in disadvantaged populations [1,7,8,9,16]. Infants of socio-economically deprived families remained more highly exposed to sleeping prone and maternal smoking [2,3,12,16]. These ®ndings were consistent with the known association between impoverished social and economic situations and an excess in both infant mortality [2±4, 9±11, 13,15,16] and SIDS [11].…”

“…When interpreting our data, several methodological caveats should be considered. First, the selection of risk factors was based on messages from the literature [2,6,9,13,15] and in the local risk-reducing campaigns. Other risk factors, such as bed sharing [5] or bottlefeeding [17] were not considered.…”

A biochemical prevalence study of smoking in pregnancy for a cross‐section of women in Christchurch, New Zealand

“…11 Yet, in the early 1990s one-third of pregnant New Zealand women were still smoking. 12 The serious adverse effects associated with maternal smoking in pregnancy, coupled with its preventable nature and relatively high prevalence, impelled the now defunct New Zealand Public Health Commission (NZPHC) to specify a goal to reduce the prevalence of maternal smoking in pregnancy to 20% or less by 2000. 13 Since 1991, reducing maternal smoking has also been widely promoted in a national SIDS prevention program.…”

Prevalence of comorbidities in obese New Zealand children and adolescents at enrolment in a community‐based obesity programme

“…However, we found a high rate of maternal smoking during pregnancy, and Maori mothers were almost twice (52%) as likely to smoke during pregnancy. National figures in 1990–1991 showed that Maori mothers were three times more likely to smoke than NZE during pregnancy based upon post‐natal self‐report (68% vs. 23%, respectively) . The rate of maternal smoking at birth among mothers in Taranaki was reported to be 20% in 2013 (maternal post‐natal self‐report) .…”

“…National figures in 1990-1991 showed that Maori mothers were three times more likely to smoke than NZE during pregnancy based upon post-natal self-report (68% vs. 23%, respectively). 34 The rate of maternal smoking at birth among mothers in Taranaki was reported to be 20% in 2013 (maternal post-natal self-report). 35 The available NZ data, based on a cohort that was almost all of NZE ethnicity, has shown that in comparison with children whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy, children of women who did smoke had an increased BMI at age 3 years.…”