PUBH6012 Fundamentals of Health Policy - Assessment 3 Research Proposal

Introduction

In the modern world, smoking is considered as an extremely bad habit that is not only harmful for the individual, but it is also harmful for the people around the individual. Despite the harmfulness of Smoking, people still smoke cigarettes and in the context of Australian pregnant women, the rate of smoking is high which not only affects them as well as the individuals around them, but also the developing baby in the womb of the pregnant women (Gould et al., 2017). The following research study will critically analyse the most effective interventions in smoking among pregnant women in Australia.

Aim of this research

The aim of this research is to analyse and evaluate the effects of smoking in pregnant women in Australia. This study also aims to assess the most effective method in cessation of smoking among Australian pregnant women.

Rationale

The habit of smoking has been medically proven to be a very unhealthy habit, as it has a number of side effects, some of them being life-threatening. For instance, it has been seen that smoking actually increases the chances of lung cancer, and it also reduces the Oxygen absorption capacity of lungs, making it difficult to breathe and reducing the capability to perform physical labour. Siu (2015) argued that for pregnant women, smoking brings additional side effects such as causing damage to the foetus and deteriorating health. In Australia, the habit of smoking among pregnant women is considerably high. Thus, it is very important to find effective intervention strategies for reducing the smoking habits among pregnant women in Australia.

Gap in literature 

The research study critically analyses and evaluates to assess the cause of smoking in Australian pregnant women. Furthermore, this study also critically analyses and evaluates the effects of smoking in pregnant women in Australia as well as the intervention methods and cessation of smoking for the Australian pregnant women. The existing studies and literature in this subject of health and smoking habits have covered a broad range of topics in the subject of smoking and other similar habits that are detrimental to human health (Gould et al., 2017).

However, Abroms et al. (2017) argued that the number of research papers and other articles, including books, is very low when it comes to the Australian context. In fact, the number of articles studying the smoking habits of Australian pregnant women is very low, which indicates that this is one of the subjects that have not been studied with much depth. Thus, the literature gap for this study is the fact that there is no literature that answers as to what are the specific effects of smoking on Australian women during their pregnancy. As such, this gives a direction to the analysis, which needs to be addressed through the findings from the secondary analysis.

As this gap in the existing literature is addressed, it will also create an opportunity for researching the intervention strategies that can reduce the smoking habits among the Australian pregnant women.