Two decades of nurse-led research on smoking during pregnancy and postpartum: concept development to intervention trials.

: Tobacco use during pregnancy and postpartum is a leading cause of preventable morbidities for women and their infants. Over the past two decades, nursing research has addressed this recalcitrant clinical problem from a variety of conceptual and methodological perspectives. The 64 published studies (1988-2009) that met inclusion criteria for this systematic review represent the full research trajectory from concept development to intervention testing. Meta-analysis demonstrated an overall significant trend in nursing intervention efficacy (OR = 1.14, 95% CI = 1.08-1.2) for studies that examined comparable prenatal and postpartum smoking cessation outcomes. Implications for future nursing research and evidence-based policy are presented.