During the past decade, numerous reports have confirmed the detrimental effects of alcohol use during pregnancy on the health of the fetus, the newborn infant and the mother. While there is not a clear consensus on whether or not women need to fully abstain from alcohol during pregnancy, no safe level of exposure has been identified. From a behavior change perspective, encouraging abstinence has the advantage of being an unambiguous message and more likely to have an impact. Recently, efforts have been made to increase awareness and inform both the mother and the physician of the effects of drinking during pregnancy. While several local, state and national campaigns to inform women of the risks have been conducted, a review of the literature indicated that there is a lack of scientific studies to indicate the effectiveness of interventions designed to help pregnant women achieve abstinence. The purpose of this project is to develop a multi-component self-help alcohol prevention intervention for economically disadvantaged pregnant women and to determine its impact on abstinence of alcohol during pregnancy. The components of this intervention will include 1) a self-help manual and 2) a skill counseling session. To develop the manual, we will conduct focus groups of pregnant women in the public health maternity clinics to help tailor the content of the self-help intervention to this group. The self-help intervention will be based on the cognitive-behavioral strategies for pregnant women designed to produce abstinence during pregnancy. To determine the effectiveness of the intervention, a prospective randomized, pre-test/post-test control group design will be used among a group of 100 pregnant drinking women who are currently attending public health maternity clinics. Each drinking pregnant women will be randomly assigned to either a usual care group or the intervention condition. Results of this pilot test will be analyzed at three different levels 1) process evaluation, 2) impact evaluation, and 3) outcome evaluation. The results of this study will provide insight currently unavailable on effectiveness and of self-help alcohol prevention programs for pregnant women.
| Reynolds, K D; Coombs, D W; Lowe, J B et al. (1995) Evaluation of a self-help program to reduce alcohol consumption among pregnant women. Int J Addict 30:427-43 |
