Su Zhaohui, McDonnell Dean, Abbas Jaffar, Shi Lili, Cai Yuyang, Yang Ling
Center on Smart and Connected Health Technologies, Mays Cancer Center, School of Nursing, University of Texas Health San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States.
Department of Humanities, Institute of Technology Carlow, Carlow, Ireland.
JMIR Cancer. 2021 Oct 7;7(4):e24984. doi: 10.2196/24984.
Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. Tobacco smoking, including secondhand smoking, causes cancer and is responsible for over 22% of global cancer deaths. The adverse impacts of secondhand smoke are more pronounced for expectant mothers, and can deteriorate both mothers' and infants' health and well-being. Research suggests that secondhand smoke significantly increases expectant mothers' risk of miscarriage, cancer, and other chronic disease conditions, and exposes their unborn babies to an increased likelihood of having life-long poor health. In China, a pregnant woman's family members, such as her husband, parents, or in-laws, are the most likely people to be smoking around her. Due to traditional Chinese cultural practices, even though some expectant mothers understand the harm of secondhand smoke, they may be reluctant to report their family members' smoking behaviors. Resulting in severe underreporting, this compromises health experts' ability to understand the severity of the issue. This paper proposes a novel approach to measure secondhand smoke exposure of pregnant women in the Chinese context. The proposed system could act as a stepping stone that inspires creative methods to help researchers more accurately measure secondhand smoking rates of expectant mothers in China. This, in turn, could help health experts better establish cancer control measures for expectant mothers and decrease their cancer risk.
癌症是全球主要的死因。吸烟，包括吸二手烟，会引发癌症，全球超过22%的癌症死亡都与此有关。二手烟对孕妇的负面影响更为明显，会损害母亲和婴儿的健康与福祉。研究表明，二手烟会显著增加孕妇流产、患癌及其他慢性病的风险，还会使未出生的婴儿更有可能一生健康状况不佳。在中国，孕妇的家庭成员，如丈夫﹑父母或公婆，是最有可能在其身边吸烟的人群。由于中国的传统文化习俗，即使一些孕妇了解二手烟的危害，她们可能也不愿举报家庭成员的吸烟行为。这导致了严重的漏报情况，影响了健康专家对该问题严重性的认识。本文提出了一种在中国背景下测量孕妇二手烟暴露情况的新方法。该提议的系统可作为一块垫脚石，激发创新方法，帮助研究人员更准确地测量中国孕妇的二手烟暴露率。反过来，这有助于健康专家更好地为孕妇制定癌症控制措施，降低她们患癌的风险。
