Offering shopping vouchers worth a total of £400 to pregnant smokers makes them more likely to quit the habit, say researchers. They have published the results of a trial involving 600 women from Glasgow in the British Medical Journal. More than 20% of the women offered vouchers stopped smoking, compared with 9% given normal NHS support alone. The Royal College of Midwives said incentivising healthy behaviours using money was "not ideal" - and expensive. Women taking part in the trial had breath tests - as well as providing saliva and urine samples - to check whether they were smoking. Blood samples were monitored too. In the randomised controlled trial, the researchers...
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