Quitline: Purpose, mission and scope

The purpose of Quitline is to provide accessible and effective behavioural interventions (smoking or vaping cessation counselling) to motivate people who smoke or vape and are thinking of quitting to make a quit attempt, and to increase the success rate of quit attempts. Quitline also responds to calls for information about quitting from people who smoke or vape, family and friends of people who smoke or vape, and provides information and secondary consultations to health and other (community and social service) professionals.

Quitline’s mission is to provide evidence based behavioural interventions for smoking or vaping cessation that are friendly, non-judgmental, inclusive and culturally safe. These interventions take the form of smoking or vaping cessation assessment, advice and counselling for the general population and for population groups with particular or complex needs, e.g. people living with mental illness, people with substance use disorders, youths, pregnant women, people experiencing social and economic disadvantage, people who are incarcerated, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and people who are gender or sexually diverse.

A smoking and vaping cessation counselling and information telephone service providing free, confidential, professional, evidence-based smoking and vaping cessation counselling to people who smoke or vape, as well as general quit information to people who smoke or vape, their families or other supporters and health (and other) professionals. The Quitline service does not charge for providing counselling or information; the only cost (if any) to the user is that incurred in contacting the service.

How can Quitline help?

Both reactive and proactive smoking and vaping cessation counselling are offered, by appropriately qualified counsellors, to a range of population groups including, but not limited to, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people living with a mental illness, people from regional and remote areas, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, people with substance use disorders, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (including the ability to utilise translation services), pregnant women, young people and sexually and gender diverse people / lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, intersex, queer or asexual (LGBTIQA+) community members.

Intensive counselling support is provided for users who register to receive call-back services to assist them to quit smoking or vaping with a frequency and approach that is consistent with the National Minimum Quitline Standards for Australian Quitline Services.

Quitline receives referrals from health professionals (such as doctors, hospitals, dentists, mental health specialists and pharmacists) via fax and other electronic means, acknowledges receipt of the referral from the health professional and notifies the referring health professional once the counselling program has ended (subject to consent by the user).

Quitline provides an online ‘webchat’-style service to engage users with the telephone counselling and to allow users to ask simple questions. The service also sends information, as clinically appropriate, in the form of fact sheets, web-page links, brochures, or pamphlets, in electronic or hard-copy form, depending on caller preference, to Quitline callers and referring health professionals.