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Privacy Policy

Welcome to our website, commonwealthfund.org (“Site”), operated by The Commonwealth Fund ("The Fund," "we," or "our").  We are committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy ("Privacy Policy"), which is part of our Terms, applies to information that personally identifies you (“personal information”) collected on our Site. This Privacy Policy governs your use of our Site. By using our Site, you agree to the collection, storage, processing, and use of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a revised version on our Site or, if we determine appropriate, by sending you an email or other notice. Please review this Privacy Policy from time to time because your continued use of our Site after a modified Privacy Policy has been posted indicates your consent to the Privacy Policy.

Protecting your privacy

We do not resell or share your information, including your email address, with third parties for marketing purposes and do not engage in cross-marketing or link-referral programs with other sites for marketing purposes.

We may provide links to third-party Sites, which may have different privacy practices. We are not responsible for, nor do control, the privacy policies of those third-party sites, and we encourage all users to read the privacy policies of each and every site visited.

Data we collect

Directly Collected Data

We may collect your personal information, including your name, email address, and a password, and, if applicable, the name of the organization you represent and your title, when you register to receive email alerts and newsletters. We may also collect personal information through surveys conducted by us or on our behalf and registration forms for events we host.

If you don’t want to receive information from us, you can opt out as described below, although you may not be able to opt out of communications relating to administration of your grant or fellowship.

Data collected under our Grants and Fellowship Portals

If you apply for a grant or fellowship, you may be required to submit additional personal information applicable to the grant or fellowship. The information you provide through the grants or fellowships portals will be used, processed, stored, and shared under the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Automatically Collected Data

When you visit our Site, certain information about your use of our Site is automatically collected. This information includes your domain name and host for Internet access; the Internet address of the site from which you came; the date and time of your access; your computer’s IP address and information about its operating system, browser and host; the date and time you access our Site and the pages you visit.

Much of this information is collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies, as well as through your web browser or device (e.g., IP address, MAC address, browser version, etc.). The tracking technologies employed when you use our Site may be first-party or third-party. We use these tracking technologies to better understand how our Site is being accessed, used, and its overall effectiveness. This information may also be used in the targeted distribution of promotions (through such platforms as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and via Google Ad Words) on behalf of our charitable work, in our grant making process, website optimization decisions, to improve the user experience of our Site, and to communicate with you, including to respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests.

Our Site uses Google Analytics, a third-party website analytics tool that collects automated information about visitor traffic. The information collected by Google Analytics is transmitted to and stored by Google and will be subject to Google’s privacy policies. You can learn how Google collects and processes data and how to opt out of tracking of analytics by Google.

If you do not want to receive cookies, you may set your browser to reject them. However, if you turn cookies off, you may not have access to some of the Site’s services and features. We also may allow third parties to issue cookies, pixels, web beacons and other tracking technologies on our Site to help us compile aggregated statistics regarding the operations of our Site.

Data Collected from Social Media

When you interact with the Site through a social media platform, we may collect the personal information that you make available to us on that page, including your account ID or username and other information included in your posts.

Do Not Track Disclosures

Some browsers have incorporated Do Not Track (“DNT”) preferences. As there is not yet an industry-standard DNT protocol on how to interpret DNT signals, we do not honor DNT signals from browsers at this time. However, you may refuse or delete cookies to prevent tracking activities.

How we use your information

We will use your personal and other information for the purpose for which you provided it, including to send you requested information related to the Fund or the Site, to respond to your inquiries and fulfill your request, to register you for and contact you about events, to administer grants and fellowships, to improve our Site and to recognize when you visit our Site, to investigate actual or suspected activities that may violate our Terms or the law. We may also use it to send you information we think may be of interest to you, where permitted by law, or to identify and prevent suspected or actual unlawful or inappropriate use of our Site.

Circumstances in which the Fund may disclose information

In some circumstances, we may share your personal information with third party service providers in providing services to you.

The Fund may disclose personal information about its users if required to do so by law, law enforcement, or in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process, or in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to: enforce our this Privacy Policy or our other Terms; respond to claims that any posting or other content violates the rights of third-parties; protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the Fund, its users or the general public or to fulfill other responsibilities or obligations as we identify in good faith.

Accessing and updating personal information

When you use the Site, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct your personal information if it is inaccurate or to delete your personal information at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, unless doing so would require a disproportionate effort.

E-Alert content and unsubscribing

The Fund sends e-alerts and e-newsletters about health policy news, research, and analysis. You can unsubscribe from our e-mail lists at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of your alert, updating your My Commonwealth Fund profile, or e-mailing [email protected].

The Fund will never send e-mail soliciting money. Please report receipt of any such e-mail that uses the Fund name or logo to [email protected].

International Users

By visiting our Site and providing us with your personal information, you acknowledge and agree that we may use the personal information collected in the course of our relationship for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy or in our other communications with you.  If you are located in another country, you acknowledge and agree that your personal information may be transferred to, and stored on servers located in, the United States. By providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer and storage.

A natural person in the European Economic Area and certain other jurisdictions (“data subject”) whose personal information is processed by a controller or processor may have rights in relation to his or her personal information which include: 

  • Right to rectify: The right to request that we rectify any inaccurate or incomplete personal information;
  • Right to withdraw consent: The right to withdraw consent to the processing of personal information carried out by us on the basis of a previous consent; such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on previous consent;
  • Right to make a subject access request (SAR): The right to request in writing copies of your personal information. However, compliance with such request is subject to certain limitations and exemptions and the rights of other individuals.  Each request should make clear that a SAR is being made. You may also be required to submit a proof of your identity and any payment permitted by law, where applicable.
  • Right to restrict or object to processing: The right to restrict or object to our processing if we are processing your information based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest as an exercise of official authority (including profiling); using your information for direct marketing (including profiling); or processing your information for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics. We will comply with valid objection requests unless we have a compelling overriding legitimate ground for the continuation of our processing or we have another lawful reason to refuse such requests. We will comply with each valid opt-out request in relation to marketing communications.
  • Right to erasure: The right to request that we erase your personal information; we will comply with your request unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so. For example, there may be an overriding legitimate ground for keeping the personal information, such as, required record retention obligations with which we must comply.
  • Restriction: The right to request that we restrict our processing of your personal information in various circumstances; we will comply with your request unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so, such as, a legal obligation to continue processing your personal information in a certain way.
  • Right to data portability: In certain circumstances, data subjects may request the controller to provide a copy of personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have it transferred to another provider of the same or similar services. We do not consider that this right applies to our Services. However, to the extent it does, we will comply with such transfer request. Please note that a transfer to another provider does not imply erasure of the data subject’s personal information which may still be retained for legitimate and lawful purposes.
  • Right to lodge a complaint: We suggest that data subjects contact us about any questions or complaints in relation to how we process their personal information. However, each data subject has the right to contact the relevant supervisory authority directly. Contact details for data protection authorities are available at: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080.

Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or the Fund's treatment of personal information by contacting us through this Site at [email protected] or [email protected] or by mail at: Commonwealth Fund, Communications Office, 1 East 75th Street, New York, New York 10021. When we receive formal written complaints at these addresses, the Fund's policy is to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal information that cannot be resolved between the Fund and an individual.

We hold your personal information and use it as described in this Privacy Policy and will use reasonable measures to ensure that your personal information is transferred only to third parties who also maintain at least these standards of protection.

To comply with applicable data privacy laws, we are required to set out the legal basis for the processing of your personal information. In accordance with the purposes for which we collect and use your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy, the legal basis for processing your personal information will typically be one of the following:

  • our own or our third parties’ legitimate business interests (for example, in maintaining and promoting our activities by providing users with feedback opportunities or other instances where we have carried out a legitimate interests assessment and have established an existing legitimate interest);
  • the performance of a contract that we have in place with you;
  • your consent where appropriate; or
  • compliance with our legal obligations.

We are committed to our mission of promoting a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable and we believe pursuing these aims is not in conflict with your rights.

Record Retention

We will keep your personal information for as long as we need it, or as otherwise prescribed by law, for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, and so this period will vary depending on your interactions with us. For example, where you have applied for a grant or fellowship, we will keep a record for the period necessary for administering the grant or fellowship, tax and similar purposes.

Security

We will take reasonable measures to protect the integrity of private communications and to protect against loss, corruption, and alteration of your personal information. However, even protected sites can be subject to hacking, technological glitches, user misconduct, and administrative errors, and we assume no liability for any of these actions or occurrences or their results.

Children under age thirteen.

Our Site is not intended for use by children under the age of thirteen. By using our Site, you represent to us that you are at least thirteen years old. If you are not at least thirteen years old, you may not use our Site. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected any personally identifiable information from a child under the age of thirteen, we will delete that information. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe that your child under age thirteen may have provided personally identifiable information through our Site, please contact us at [email protected].

Additional questions or comments concerning this Privacy Policy

If you have any additional questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us any time at [email protected].