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Do you have some articles from the old or even older Quitnet to share with everyone?
Original Founder of QuitNet -- Nate C.
By Nate C. --
I'm a Strategic Advisor to MeYou Health and the company’s former Chief Medical Officer. I founded QuitNet a very long time ago - 20 years ago in fact. Back then I wrote the code, served as our coach and even did a bunch of the graphics. More recently I advised the much more capable team that rebuilt the entire system!
In addition to working with MeYou Health I'm also a practicing physician.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Over the years we’ve lost track of the dates, but the first version of QuitNet was launched somewhere around this time of year in 1997. In the beginning QuitNet was really just some simple tools to give smokers feedback on their habit. It wasn’t until a couple years later that we introduced social features. We rebuilt the site many times over the years, but it wasn’t until we completely overhauled it at MeYou Health in 2015 that the code I had written in the 90s was fully replaced.
In the early days of QuitNet we only had two people working in the community and offering support: myself and eventually a coach. Over time, I moved on to work on other topics, and our coaches shifted to doing more actual coaching and spent less and less time in the community.
Since the re-launch the coaching and product teams have realized that having a community representative is critically important, someone who can help jump-start conversations, loop in the coaches or clinical staff when it’s appropriate, share feedback with the product team, and help cultivate a supportive, welcoming community at QuitNet for anyone who wants to quit smoking.
I’m incredibly excited that @Corrie M. has joined the QuitNet team to take on this role. She will be working directly with @Llaen C. and @Maureen O., our director of coaching and product manager respectively. You may already have seen Corrie around or gotten a private message from her as she gets to know the QuitNet community.
It’s a tough job to step into a bustling community of people with strong opinions working to overcome their nicotine addictions, but we know she’s up to it. She’ll have our full backing as we work to ensure that QuitNet stays the best place to get online support for quitting tobacco.
As always, feel free to ask questions via PM or in comments.
Nate
Nate Cobb, MD
Chief Medical Officer … and QuitNet Founder
MeYou Health