title: Investigating the link between smoke-free legislation and stillbirths.
abstract: Despite considerable recent progress in tobacco control, smoking and second-hand smoke exposure continue to pose a major health threat to adults, children, and (unborn) babies. There is increasing evidence that implementation of smoke-free legislation, through reducing smoking and smoke exposure, has the potential to improve population health. In this editorial we focus on the research on smoke-free legislation in relation to stillbirths, summarizing the findings to-date, reflecting on methodological issues that need to be considered when interpreting this evidence base, and highlighting some key next steps to further strengthen the evidence in order to inform evidence-based policy making.
authors.affiliation: a Division of Neonatology , Erasmus University Medical Centre-Sophia Children's Hospital , Rotterdam , Netherlands.|b Centre of Medical Informatics, Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics , The University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh , UK.|c School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) , Maastricht University , Maastricht , Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jasper V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Been
authors.affiliation: b Centre of Medical Informatics, Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics , The University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh , UK.|c School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) , Maastricht University , Maastricht , Netherlands.|d Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care , Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School , Boston , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Aziz
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sheikh
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D011247:Pregnancy; D061845:Smoke-Free Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D050497:Stillbirth / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*
chemical_list: D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution
keywords: Smoking; fetus; methodology; perinatal mortality; policy; pregnancy; prevention; quasi-experiment; second-hand smoke; tobacco