• May G Kennedy, Maureen Wilson Genderson, Allison L Sepulveda, Sheryl L Garland, Diane Baer Wilson, Rose Stith-Singleton, and Susan Dubuque.
• Social and Behavioral Health Department, Virginia Commonwealth University VCU School of Medicine, Richmond, Virginia 23298-0149, USA. mgkennedy@vcu.edu
• J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2013 May 1; 22 (5): 432438432-8.

IntroductionPregnant African American women are at disproportionately high risk of premature birth and infant mortality, outcomes associated with cigarette smoking. Telephone-based, individual smoking cessation counseling has been shown to result in successful quit attempts in the general population and among pregnant women, but "quitlines" are underutilized. A social marketing campaign called One Tiny Reason to Quit (OTRTQ) promoted calling a quitline (1-800-QUIT-NOW) to pregnant, African American women in Richmond, Virginia, in 2009 and was replicated there 2 years later.MethodsThe campaign disseminated messages via radio, interior bus ads, posters, newspaper ads, and billboards. Trained volunteers also delivered messages face-to-face and distributed branded give-away reminder items. The number of calls made from pregnant women in the Richmond area during summer 2009 was contrasted with (a) the number of calls during the seasons immediately before and after the campaign, and (b) the number of calls the previous summer. The replication used the same evaluation design.ResultsThere were statistically significant spikes in calls from pregnant women during both campaign waves for both types of contrasts. A higher proportion of the calls from pregnant women were from African Americans during the campaign.ConclusionA multimodal quitline promotion like OTRTQ should be considered for geographic areas with sizable African American populations and high rates of infant mortality.

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