BabyBreathe™ was a UK research programme designed to help people who stop smoking during pregnancy to stay smoke-free after their baby is born.
The BabyBreathe™ intervention was co-designed with women, partners, health visitors and maternity staff. It was developed collaboratively by a team led by Professor Caitlin Notley at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in partnership with the iHV, NHS and public health colleagues, and funded by the NIHR. The study is now complete and recruited 887 participants through routine midwifery and health visiting contacts across four UK regions.
At the time of the study, there was no routine NHS support focused specifically on preventing return to smoking after pregnancy, despite the clear harms of maternal smoking and second-hand smoke exposure for babies and children. BabyBreathe™ is a comprehensive relapse-prevention program designed to help people maintain abstinence from smoking, improve maternal health and wellbeing, reduce babies’ exposure to second-hand smoke, support smoke-free homes and families, and break the intergenerational cycle of smoking.
Early findings:
Full trial results are currently being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. However, early analyses show that:
- There was a positive direction of effect – a higher proportion of people in the BabyBreathe™ group remained smoke-free at 12 months compared with usual care, although this difference did not reach statistical significance in the main intention-to-treat analysis.
- When researchers looked specifically at people who received the intervention as intended (per-protocol analysis), there was a statistically significant improvement in abstinence at 12 months compared with usual care.
- Overall, smoking abstinence rates were higher than expected in both groups, suggesting a highly motivated population and widespread use of relapse-prevention strategies (including e-cigarettes) across the trial.
- The intervention was well received. Participants particularly valued the supportive tone of the texts, the physical BabyBreathe™ box as a positive reminder, and the non-judgemental support from practitioners.
A journal article with the full findings is expected to be published in the near future. We’ll update this page and link to the paper as soon as it is available.
