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NHS Tayside was one of the worst performing health boards in Scotland
with regard to smoking and pregnancy,
and one of the key issues was that the services and initiatives that were working on this
were simply unable to turn the figures around to the extent required.
As a result of that, we adopted a social marketing strategy,
the first phase of which was in-depth focused research to identify motivators and barriers to change.
We targeted Dundee pregnant mothers, most of whom fell into deprivation categories 6 and 7
and as a result of that we designed an intervention.
As a result of the information we received from pregnant mothers and their immediate others
the intervention was based on what was of most value to them.
And we also did a lot of literature search as well and what we discovered
was that the most important thing to them was putting food on the table.
Therefore any kind of intervention based on health arguments was not going to be very successful;
what we had to do was use the idea of disposable income as being a motivator for change
and this is what we did.
So as a result of this we designed an initiative that would provide mothers with £12.50 a week of grocery vouchers
which were redeemable at ASDA, and local pharmacies would be the gatekeepers for this scheme,
and they would check mothers using carbon monoxide testing to make sure that they were smoke free,
that the mothers would get £12.50 a week for a maximum of the months of the pregnancy
and then 3 months afterwards.
The ‘Give It Up For Baby’ social marketing initiative was really relatively iconic,
I know that’s a very ambitious word but I mean that’s the way I see it.
It was one of the first social marketing initiatives in our view and indeed the views of others
including people down south in the National Social Marketing Centre which actually used,
not just social marketing methodology but actually delivered measurable behavioural outcomes,
which were not only impressive to us and policy makers,
but also caught the attention of our colleagues in the acute sector.
And as a result of that, many more initiatives have now emerged using social marketing methodology,
which we were delighted about. For the Scottish government,
it also meant that they became increasingly interested in this model,
and have now funded us for a number of other pilots to run on behalf of Scotland,
including of course the social marketing toolkit.
It’s also quite interesting that as a result of the success of Give it up for Baby,
it has now been endorsed by Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond
as a project that should be rolled out across Scotland,
so no greater praise than that.
The project itself continues to be successful,
in itself its outcomes are very impressive
and it has certainly doubled the overall numbers of mothers quitting smoking
in Tayside, so we will be continuing with it one way or the other because
in terms of its cost effectiveness there are now no doubts.