Web Site Privacy Policy

Last updated: December 18, 2023

We understand the importance of safeguarding personal information and are committed to protecting your privacy. This Website Privacy Policy explains what information University of Vermont Health and our provider partners collect about you when you visit our public websites and how we use and share that information. This Privacy Policy does not describe the information we collect about you through other means, such as information we collect at our locations or at in-person events.

Your Protected Health Information

UVM Health is made up of health care providers that are subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). If you are a patient and we collect your protected health information (“PHI”) in the course of providing care to you or as you navigate our websites, please review our Notice of Privacy Practices. This Website Privacy Policy does not apply to your PHI.

The Information We Collect

We may collect the following categories of information about you:

• Contact information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number
• Professional information, such as your employment and educational history
• Internet activity information, such as your IP address, name of the network domain you use to access the Internet, your browsing history, and information about your interactions with our websites
• Location information, such as your ZIP code
• Other information you choose to provide, such as information you provide when you contact us

How We Collect Your Information

We collect information from a variety of sources, including:

• Our interactions with you, such as when you contact us, submit a survey, sign up for an event, or apply for a job
• Cookies and other automated technologies, which are deployed on various pages of the Website
• Third parties, such as business partners, social media companies, and public sources

How We Use Your Personal Information

Depending on how you interact with our websites, we may use your personal information in the following ways:

• Provide the services you request, assess interest in current programs and services, and respond to your communications
• Send you information, including newsletters and promotional materials
• Confirm eligibility and enroll you in classes, events, and other programs for which you’ve signed up, and verify your participation in those programs
• Evaluate your candidacy for a job that you’ve applied for
• Understand how our website is used, troubleshoot website issues, and improve website functionality
• Other internal business purposes that support our operations, such as maintaining business records, enforcing our policies and rules, auditing, IT security and administration, and fraud detection

How We May Share Your Personal Information

We may share your personal information with third parties, including the categories of recipients listed below:

• Members of our provider network, for our or their internal business purposes
• Service providers that work on our behalf to support our business operations, such as IT providers, data analytics providers, and companies that provide business support services, financial administration, or event organization
• Professional consultants that we retain to assist us, such as accountants, lawyers, and audit firms
• Law enforcement, government agencies, and other recipients when required by law and to protect our, our users’, or third parties’ safety, property, or rights
• Other entities in connection with a corporate transaction, such as if we acquire, or sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets including through a sale in connection with bankruptcy and other forms of corporate change.

How to Opt Out of Marketing Emails

We may send you emails with marketing or other promotional information about services that we offer. If you do not want to receive promotional emails from us, you may unsubscribe by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link that appears in the emails that we send. Alternatively, you may contact us using the information that appears in the “Contact Us” section. Please be aware that, even if you unsubscribe from emails, you might continue to receive emails from us concerning legal matters, your health care, and other important topics.

How We Use Cookies and Why

“Cookies” are electronic pieces of information which can be stored by your browser on the hard drive of your computer. We use cookies to collect the domain name of your computer server when you access one of our public websites. We use that information to determine how many persons visit our websites daily. We also use cookies to help us understand how our websites are used, what portions of the websites are most frequently accessed, and how we can improve our websites to better meet user needs.

We generally use cookies for the following purposes:

• Functionality/necessity, including to allow you to view a webpage, log into an account, or fill in a form. These technologies are necessary so that users can navigate our website
• Personalization, such as to remember language preferences and pages you have viewed to enhance and personalize your experience
• Analytics, such as to analyze how our websites are used to maintain and improve the performance and your experience;
• Targeting, such as to conduct marketing and content personalization on our website and those of third parties, track activity over time and across properties to develop a profile of your interests and advertise to you based on those interests (“interest-based marketing”), provide you with offers and online content that may be of interest to you, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and our communications with you

Most browsers automatically accept a cookie, but you can usually modify the settings on your browser to refuse cookies or to let you know when one has been accepted.

In addition to cookies, we may also use the following types of tracking technologies:

• Pixels and tags, which are types of code or transparent graphics that contain a unique identifier. These technologies provide information about interactions with our websites and help us customize our marketing activities. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's device hard drive, pixels and tags are embedded invisibly on our websites.
• Session replay tools, which record your interactions with our websites, such as how you move throughout our websites and engage with our webforms. This information helps us improve our websites and identify and fix technical issues visitors may be having.
• Embedded scripts and SDKs, which allow us to build and integrate custom experiences on our websites. Embedded scripts are temporarily downloaded onto your device from our web server, or from a third party with which we work, and are active only while you are connected to our websites and are deleted or deactivated thereafter.

We may use both first-party tracking technologies, which are set by us, and third-party tracking technologies, which are set by other parties. Some of the tracking technologies we use may last solely for your browsing session and are deleted when you close your browser, while other are persistent and stored after you close your browser.

Social Media Widgets

Certain pages on the websites may include social sharing widgets, like the LinkedIn Share button or the Facebook Like button. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on the websites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on the websites. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy statement of the companies that provide them.

Do Not Track Signals

Some web browsers include a “Do Not Track” feature that signals to websites that a user does not want to have their Internet activity tracked. While we are committed to respecting your privacy choices, these features are not uniform. For that reason, we do not currently recognize or respond to these Do Not Track signals.

Third Party Links

Our websites contain links to other sites, but this Website Privacy Policy does not apply to those sites. As noted earlier, this Website Privacy Policy applies only to web pages from UVM Health public websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies on other sites before providing any personal information through those sites.

Updates

We may update this Website Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post updated versions of the Website Privacy Policy on this page so that you can always be aware of the types of information that we collect and how we use that information.

Contact Us

Please feel free to contact our Communications and Engagement Strategies Department if you have any questions or concerns about this Website Privacy Policy by:

• Filling out the contact us form on our website
• Mailing a letter to 111 Colchester Avenue, Burlington, Vermont 05401 (Attention: Communications and Engagement Strategies)
• Calling us at 802-847-2886