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November 2014
Health Effects 
Health Effects of Smoking for Women
Health Effects of Smoking for Women
In this clip The Doctors' Dr. Travis Stork and Pfizer's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, gauge specific risks that female smokers face.
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Resources 
Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond: A Virtual Clinic is an updated online training, based on the "Virtual Practicum" model. The training is intended for health care professionals who will be assisting their female patients in quitting smoking, especially patients who are pregnant or in their child-bearing years.
 

WHO's monograph, Gender, Women, and the Tobacco Epidemic, contributes to the scientific understanding of gender, women, and tobacco in the context of efforts to control the global tobacco epidemic. Topics covered include determinants of tobacco use; exposure to second-hand smoke; the impact that tobacco use has on health; addiction and cessation; treatment programs; and gender and human rights policy.

 

You Quit, Two Quit provides resources to assist health care providers who serve reproductive-age women who use tobacco, including clinician resources, technical assistance tools, and patient materials.  

 
  Treatobacco.net is a unique source of evidence-based data and practical support for the treatment of tobacco dependence. It is aimed at physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, researchers, policy makers, psychologists, regulators and anyone interested in the personal and public health issues connected with tobacco use around the world.
 
  The American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence is committed to protecting children from tobacco and secondhand smoke. The Richmond Center offers tools and resources to help clinicians and communities, as well as supports research and policy development to create a healthy environment for children, adolescents, and families. 
 
 
The CDC launched the first-ever paid national tobacco education campaign - Tips From Former Smokers (Tips) in March 2012. The Tips campaign profiles real people living with serious long-term health effects from smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. Campaign resources, including posters, videos, and fact-sheets are available on their website. 
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Tobacco Use & Women's Health        
 
 
Since the first Surgeon General's report on smoking and health in 1964, there have been 34 more, each with the consensus that tobacco use causes disability and deathTobacco use damages almost every organ of the human body, leading to a multitude of diseases and reducing the health of tobacco users in general. In fact, the adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for more than 400,000 deaths each year in the United States; for every person that dies from a tobacco-related disease, 20 more suffer with at least one serious tobacco-related illness.
 
Today, women comprise about 20% of the world's more than 1 billion smokers. While both men and women who smoke are prone to cancer, heart disease and respiratory disease, tobacco causes additional female-specific cancers and compromises pregnancy and reproductive health.
 
Health Effects of Tobacco Use on Women

Tobacco is the single greatest modifiable risk factor for premature disease and is the leading cause of death in women in the United States. Women who smoke double their risk for developing coronary heart disease and have a sixfold increased risk of myocardial infarction when compared with nonsmoking women. Tobacco use causes endothelial damage and platelet aggregation, contributing to thrombosis in smokers, almost doubling their risk of stroke. Smoking is also directly responsible for more than 90% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or emphysema and chronic bronchitis deaths each year. Female smokers are nearly 13 times more likely to die from COPD compared to women who have never smoked. In 2006, about 52% of all COPD deaths were in women, the seventh year in a row that women outnumbered men in deaths attributable to COPD. Further, the antiestrogen effect of tobacco use accelerates menopause. This premature menopause increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and increases the risk of osteoporotic fracture independent of bone mineral density score. 

 
Tobacco Use and Cancer 

Approximately 90% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking or exposure to tobacco smoke. Smoking is directly responsible for 80% of lung cancer deaths in women in the US each year. In 2009, an estimated 70,490 women died of lung and bronchus cancer. And, while lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the US in 1987, a linear relationship exists between premenopausal tobacco use and breast cancer, particularly if smoking is initiated before the birth of the first child.

 

Women who smoke are also at an increased risk of developing certain gynecologic cancers. Cigarette smoking has been identified as a risk factor in the development of mucinous epithelial ovarian cancer and contributes to the progression of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Both active and passive smoking have been linked to squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix in women seropositive for HPV-16 or HPV-18. Women who smoke also have an increased risk for developing cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and uterine cervix.

 

Smoking During Pregnancy  

Tobacco use during pregnancy is a health risk for both the woman and the baby and remains one of the most common preventable causes of pregnancy complications, illness and death among infants. Compared with nonsmokers, women who smoke before pregnancy are about twice as likely to experience delays in conception, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, premature rupture of the membranes, placental abruption, placenta previa, and stillbirth. Compared with
babies born to non-smokers, babies born to women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to be premature, low birth weight, small for gestational age or fetal growth restricted, and born with a cleft lip, cleft palate, or both. They are also more likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and suffer from respiratory conditions and childhood cancers. Further, CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data reports that about 10% of women smoke during the last three months of pregnancy. While it is ideal to quit before conceiving, women who quit smoking during pregnancy can reduce their risk for poor pregnancy outcomes. 
Tobacco Cessation Resources 

 
Smokefree.gov is intended to help you or someone you care about quit smoking. Different people need different resources as they try to quit smoking cigarettes and this site allows you to choose the help that best fits your needs. The information and professional assistance available on this website and Smokefree Women can help support both your immediate and long-term needs as you become, and remain, a non-smoker. 
 
The North American Quitline Consortium is an international, non-profit membership organization that seeks to         promote evidence-based quitline services across diverse communities in North America.   Quitlines are telephone-based tobacco cessation services that help tobacco users quit. Today, residents in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the District of Columbia have access to quitline services. The  NAQC Quitline Map can help you find information about your state's quitline and the services they provide. 
 
Freedom From Smoking� Online, or FFS Online, is a program specifically designed for adults, like you, who want to quit smoking. It takes you through modules, each containing several lessons and assignments to reinforce lesson messages as well as your commitment to quit.

FFS Online is an adaptation of the American Lung Association's gold standard, Freedom From Smoking� group clinic, that has helped thousands of smokers to quit for good. 
 
The EX Plan is a free quit smoking program, one that can show you a whole new way to think about quitting. It's based on personal experiences from ex-smokers as well as the latest scientific research from the experts at Mayo Clinic.
 
The Quit For Life Program managed by the American Cancer Society and Alere Wellbeing is a phone-based coaching and Web-based learning support service to help smokers quit. Participants are matched with a quit coach, who helps them develop a personalized quit plan, provides guidance in choosing medicines, and gives ongoing follow-up support. This program has helped more than 1 million tobacco users make a plan to quit for good.

Tell Us What YOU Think!  

 

What are innovative ways that healthcare providers can better support women on their journey to become tobacco free? We'd love to share any resources - books, websites, apps, etc - that you find useful!  

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Every Woman Southeast Coalition | http://www.everywomansoutheast.org 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
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