REFRESH—reducing families' exposure to secondhand smoke in the home: a feasibility study

Abstract

Providing mothers who smoke with personalised results about the indoor air quality of their homes along with a motivational interview is feasible and has an effect on improving household air quality. Participants found the intervention understandable and acceptable. Taken overall, the results suggest that a future large-scale trial using measurements of indoor air quality as part of a complex intervention to reduce children's SHS exposure should be explored.

Detection of Secondhand Cigarette Smoke via Nicotine Using Conductive Polymer Films

“…Relating SHS exposure of a child (or other nonsmoker) to "the equivalent of xx cigarettes" provides a more striking and readily assimilated message. We hypothesize that such a message would have maximum impact, similar to the ways in which delivering the PM2.5 levels worked in the cited REFRESH study (Wilson, Ritchie, et al, 2013, Wilson, Semple, et al, 2012. We should also be able to correlate our electronic measurements to others currently in use, such as the real-time PM2.5 studies (Semple, Apsley, & MacCalman, 2012), by a cross calibration.…”

“…Studies using direct measures of in-home concentrations of ambient nicotine (Emmons et al, 2001) or PM2.5 have shown better success (Wilson, Ritchie, et al, 2013;Wilson, Semple, et al, 2012), suggesting that the specificity of the information regarding smoke exposure from within the home may be more persuasive. The ability to provide real-time feedback in response to specific smoking situations may be even more persuasive to change the behaviors of smokers; however, the possibility of such feedback has previously not been possible given technological limitations.…”

Using air quality monitoring to reduce second-hand smoke exposure in homes: the AFRESH feasibility study

“…The intervention is designed to be delivered by support workers employed by third-sector organisations, therefore widening the potential group of people who can deliver it by researchers and healthcare workers, as used in previous research 7 . The intervention is designed to be simple to deliver, to use a lowcost monitor and is structured around a series of modules and contacts between the worker and the parent: full details are available in the supplementary material 11 .…”

“…The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of delivering this theory-based intervention through small third-sector organisations in deprived areas within Scotland. While previous research in this area has relied on researchers providing air quality information to participants 7 , the present study gave full responsibility to nontechnical staff, thus testing the feasibility of the intervention in a real-world setting.…”

“…Fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) is a significant component of indoor air pollution, and has been widely used in tobacco control research as a marker for the presence of SHS 6 . Indoor air quality monitoring and feedback therefore has been explored as a potential motivator in interventions to encourage parents to keep smoke-free homes [7][8][9] . However, there is currently little evidence of interventions that have solid theoretical foundations in behaviour-change theory.…”