Bibs Study

BIBS: Benefits of Incentives for Breastfeeding and Smoking cessation: A platform study for a trial

Can incentives help women to stop smoking and to try breastfeeding?

The aim of this research is to try and find out which incentives (financial or non-financial), if any, are most likely to help women to stop smoking in pregnancy (and not restart) and to breastfeed their babies until 6 months, to benefit the health of both mothers and babies. We will start by finding research studies and reports about the different types of incentives that have been used. We will see whether they work, how much incentive is needed, the timing and how best to deliver it. We will produce a classification and summary of different types and combinations of incentive, how they work and how they fit with all the other pros and cons or motivating factors for breastfeeding and smoking. This will produce a short-list of the most promising incentives.
The next stage is to see how acceptable this short-list is and decide which incentive is the most likely to work in a future research trial. To do this, we will interview women, their partners, health professionals and experts in breastfeeding and smoking. We will seek views on different examples of incentives, how they could be improved and factors that might prevent them working or make them more likely to work. We will choose one or two incentives and will send a web survey by e mail to doctors, midwives, health visitors; government departments and research funding bodies; members of health service ethics committees and the general public who would probably pay for incentives through taxation. Finally, we will use a type of economic questionnaire called a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) that asks women (or others) about the likelihood of the incentive working for them to help finalise the design of a future trial.

http://www. hta. ac. uk /project /2570. asp