For Your Health: 5 A’s And 5 R’s Curriculum

On the Ripley County Health Center’s Maternal and Child Health Services contract, we have begun a new phase. We are now providing what is called the 5 A’s and 5 R’s curriculum to prevent and reduce smoking in women of childbearing age and pregnant women.

We know that smoking can be a factor in sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory illnesses, middle ear disease and chronic respiratory symptoms. We know that smoking takes away not just the smoker’s health but wealth also.

The 5 R’s curriculum includes: Strategies for implementation.

Relevance: We encourage our clients how quitting is personally relevant to them. Motivational information has the greatest impact if it is relevant to their health.

Risk: We encourage them to identify potential negative consequences of tobacco use that are relevant to them. These include acute risks: shortness of breath, asthma, increased respiratory infections, harm to pregnancy to name some.

Rewards: We provide information on rewards such as improved health, food will taste better, improved sense of smell, saving money, having healthier babies, improved appearance and more.

Roadblocks: We ask the patients to identify barriers or impediments to quitting like withdrawal symptoms, fear or failure, weight gain, depression, being around tobacco users, etc.

Repetition: We repeat assessment of readiness to quit. If still not ready to quit repeat intervention at a later date.

All of our clients who want to quit smoking are referred to the Missouri Quit line. That number is 1-800-quit.now (784-8669) Free coaching is available along with nicotine patches and gum, FDA approved medication, individual and group counseling.

The 5 A’s to avoid exposure to second hand smoke (SHS) curriculum includes: If the patient is a nonsmoker, we offer brief advice to inform them about the dangers of second-hand smoke (SHS) and how to avoid this.

Ask: We ask our non-smoking patients if they are exposed to second-hand smoke and make it part of our routine.

Advise: We educate every patient who is exposed to SHS about the dangers and to avoid it.

Assess: We assess if the patient is willing to reduce this danger or not. We assess where the patient is exposed to second hand smoke and see if there is a possibility to reduce the exposure.

Assist: We assist our patients in developing an action plan to reduce their exposure to SHS.

Arrange: We arrange for a follow up contact after around one week to provide necessary support.

We are hopeful by providing these services, our goal of reducing smoking in our maternal child health population will decrease significantly.

We are pleased to provide another wonderful intervention for patients in Ripley County.

If more information is needed, please call 573-996-2181.