May 3, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By NICOLE WALLACE
A Boston public-health charity is spinning off its online smoking-prevention program as a for-profit company.
Since its creation in 1995, QuitNet has provided information and support to people who are trying to break their dependence on nicotine. The site was started as a project of Join Together, a charity based at the Boston University School of Public Health that helps grass-roots organizations that are working to reduce substance abuse and gun violence in their communities.
QuitNet’s transition into a for-profit venture should be complete this month, with Boston University and QuitNet’s employees and investors as owners. Chris Cartter, QuitNet’s president, says Join Together and the university saw the change in status as a way to make QuitNet self-supporting and to expand its offerings. “We really think that it’s important to demonstrate that a project like this can pay its own way in the world and still do good,” he explains.
The new company will work with state agencies, health-insurance plans, and employers to develop programs to help their constituents stop smoking. Mr. Cartter says that although no definite decisions have been made yet, QuitNet will probably develop new, more-sophisticated services that people who come to the site would have to pay for, but he says that there will always be a free component as well.
Each month, 65,000 to 70,000 new users visit QuitNet, and about 4,500 register as members. Members offer one another support in chat rooms, with instant messaging and on-site e-mail, and on message boards that focus on topics like the connections between smoking and depression and how to stop smoking without gaining weight. Tools on the site also help users identify the reasons why they smoke, set a quit date, and calculate both the monetary and health benefits of kicking the habit.
Mr. Cartter identifies the 24-hour-a-day availability of support as one of the site’s most important benefits. “There’s not a minute during the day or night that QuitNet is empty,” he points out.
To get there: Go to http://www.quitnet.org.
