Last Updated: January 19, 2024

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, its successors and assigns, and all of its present and former affiliates (including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation) (“CHOP”, “we”, “us” or “our) has created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate its commitment to privacy. This Privacy discloses our information-gathering and dissemination practices for this Web site, located at https://www.chop.edu/ (the “Service”).  The Privacy Policy should be reviewed in tandem with the Terms of Use, which also applies to the Service.

PLEASE REVIEW THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. When you submit information to or through the Service, you consent to the collection and processing of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

If you are a Colorado resident or an EU resident, you may have additional rights afforded to you. For additional information on your rights and how to exercise such rights, please see the section entitled “Colorado Residents” or “EU Residents”.

Security Reminder

Be aware that third party actors attempt to acquire sensitive information through phishing.  If you receive a call, text, email, or social media that you cannot verify is from CHOP asking for sensitive information, do not respond. If you have questions, call your CHOP provider using a phone number you know is legitimate, or contact us through MyCHOP.

Information We Collect

Personal information. Through your accessing of the Service and interactions with the Service, such as contacting us through the Service, responding to a survey about your experience with us (including but not limited to your experience using the Service), registering for an event, submitting donations, scheduling or cancelling an appointment, providing referral information, inquiring about or applying for employment opportunities, using the chat functionality on our Careers, MyCHOP, and Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment pages, inquiring about or completing continuing education, completing forms as part of the intake process, creating an account with us, or otherwise subscribing to one of our online publications or email newsletters, CHOP may collect personal information you provide about yourself or your child. Such personal information may include name, address, telephone number, email address, billing address, transaction history, credit card or other payment information, insurance information, medical information, date of birth, NPI number, educational or employment information, demographic information, and any other information you may provide to us when you contact us, initiate a chat with us on our Careers, MyCHOP, and Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment pages, or complete a form through the Service.

CHOP may collect other information about your computer hardware and software, such as browser and device information or information collected through cookies, pixel tags, and other technologies, as discussed in Cookies and Other Technologies below. If we are required to treat this information as personal information under applicable law, then we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose personal information as detailed in this policy.

We also contract with our third-party vendors to provide publicly available information to enrich your personal information related to donations.

Cookies and Other Technology

The Service uses “cookies” during a site visit. A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website or use an online service. When you visit the website or use the service again, the cookie allows that website or online service to recognize your browser or device. Cookies may store unique identifiers, user preferences and other information. We may use “session cookies” or “persistent cookies.” Session cookies are temporary and expire once you close your browser or once your session ends. Persistent cookies remain on your device for much longer or until you or your browser erase them. Persistent cookies have varying durations that are dependent on their expiration date. Cookies are used by the Service in the following ways: 

Strictly necessary cookies – for usability purposes and to comply with subscription preferences that our visitors have given us. No personal identifying data is collected and the “cookie” is erased when the visit ends.

Analytical cookies and scripts – The Service uses analytical cookies and scripts to measure website use and performance, including possible recording of user sessions on the Service.  

Tracking cookies – The Service and some of our third-party service providers may also use tracking “cookies” on a limited basis to measure the effectiveness of our advertising and to deliver targeted advertising to users who have visited specific pages of the Service.  For example, we may use Google Tag Manager, Google Paid, Google Grant on the Service’s donation pages for our fundraising purposes (e.g., to track constituents who interacted with our ads on external sites). To learn more about how Google uses data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.” You may download and install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each web browser you use. Using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not prevent the use of other analytics tools.  Where videos are embedded on the Service, some of our third-party service providers may also collect video viewing information and your device ID or other identifier.  You can turn off cookies in your browser preferences at any time without affecting performance of the Service, if you wish to do so.

Web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to manage and delete cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. 

To find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers, please visit:

• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Edge
• Mozilla Firefox
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Opera
• Apple Safari

Some web browsers provide settings that allow a user to reject cookies or to alert a user when a cookie is placed on the user’s computer, tablet or mobile device. Most mobile devices also offer settings to reject mobile device identifiers. Although users are not required to accept cookies or mobile device identifiers, blocking or rejecting them may prevent access to some features available through the Service. 

In addition to cookies, we may use the following data collection tools to provide you with a more consistent and personalized experience when interacting with us and to provide you with information about the services we may provide that we think may be of interest to you:

• Log File Data. The Service may collect the IP address of Service visitors, as well as aggregate information about site traffic and server load. We may use this information to maintain and improve the Service. We may also store IP addresses and host names for auditing and security purposes.
• Pixels. We may utilize pixels both on certain aspects of the Service and in HTML-formatted email messages to you. These monitoring tools may be used for the purpose of, among other things, measuring the success of our marketing campaigns, compiling statistics about Service usage and tracking the activities of users of the Service and email recipients. For instance, we may use Meta Pixels, TradeDesk Tracking Tags, Bing Pixels on the Service’s donation pages to collect or receive information from such pages and elsewhere on the Internet to use the information to enable us to create targeted ads and measure the effectiveness of our ads. For additional information on targeted ads, please see below.

As mentioned above, we may collect information about your online activities on specific pages of the Service (e.g., donation pages) to provide you with advertising tailored to you. We also may obtain information for this purpose from third-party websites on which our advertisements are served.

You may see certain advertisements on other websites because we work with advertising partners (including advertising networks) to engage in remarketing and retargeting activities. Our advertising partners allow us to target our messaging to users through demographic, interest-based and contextual means. These partners track your online activities over time and across websites, including the Service, by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of third-party cookies, web server logs and web beacons. They use this information to show you advertisements that may be tailored to your individual interests. The information our advertising partners may collect includes data about your visits to websites that participate in the relevant advertising networks, such as the pages or advertisements you view and the actions you take on the websites. This data collection takes place both on the Service and on third-party websites that participate in the ad networks. This process also helps us track the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. For example, we utilize certain of our advertising partners’ targeted advertising services to show you our advertisements on other websites based on your prior visits to the Service and other online activity.

If you are logged in or have an account with third party social media providers while you access our Services, those third-party providers may collect additional information about your use of our Services and you should review those privacy policies. Provided that a company participates in industry-developed programs designed to provide consumers choices about whether to receive targeted advertising, you may opt out of interest-based advertising generally through the Network Advertising Initiative website or by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ (web-based advertising) or http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices (for mobile advertising). To learn more, please visit the websites operated by the Network Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance at www.networkadvertising.org/choices. Opting-out does not mean that you will stop receiving advertisements from us. It means that you still stop receiving advertisements from us that have been targeted to you based on your visits and browsing activity across websites over time.

How We Use Your Information

CHOP may collect your information through the Service:

• To provide, operate and manage the Service;
• To provide newsletters and other communications;
• To communicate with you, including in response to the inquiries you make through the chat functionality on our Careers, MyCHOP, and Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment pages, about medical information in response to your inquiries and/or to share information about donations, employment opportunities, or CHOP’s services you have requested;
• If you are a health care provider, to communicate with you in response to your inquiries and/or to share information about CHOP’s services;
• To process your donations and event registration, including to notify you of your registration status and provide a receipt for the donation;
• To process your employment application;
• To connect you with and register you for continuing education courses;
• To schedule or cancel your appointments;
• As part of the intake process;
• To improve and personalize the Service, including to improve and personalize the performance, content, and layout of our web pages;
• To help us engage with persons who may wish to donate to the CHOP foundation;
• To serve targeted, personalized advertising for opportunities to give or participate in events, and to measure how effective our marketing campaigns are;
• To direct you to specific content based on the way you interacted with the website;
• As otherwise disclosed at the time of collection or use;
• To solicit feedback related to CHOP services;
• For customer service, security, to detect fraud or illegal activities, and for archival and backup purposes in connection with the provision of the Service;
• To monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities;
• To comply with our legal obligations and exercise our legal rights; and/or
• For any other purposes specified at the point of collection.

Sharing of Information

CHOP may share your information collected through the Service:

• With Third-Party Service Providers Performing Services on Our Behalf. We may share your personal information with our service providers to perform the functions for which we engage them. For example, we may use third parties to host the Service or assist us in providing functionality on the Service (such as the chat functionality on our Careers, MyCHOP, and Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment pages), provide analytics on the Service, process your donations, serve targeted advertisements, or send out our newsletters or email updates about the Service. By using our Service, you authorize us to share information regarding your account and your use of our Service, including audiovisual viewing information, video titles and video descriptions with digital distributors and other online platforms to which you are connected. You understand that those digital distributors will use the information in accordance with their privacy policies and applicable terms and conditions and that CHOP, including third party service providers acting on its behalf, will use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the applicable Terms of Use.
• With our Business Partners. We may share information with our business partners so that CHOP and its business partners can provide you with information about causes and campaigns or products and services that may be of interest to you.
• For Legal Purposes. We also may share information that we collect from users as needed to enforce our rights, protect our property or protect the rights, property or safety of others, or as needed to support external auditing, compliance and corporate governance functions. We will disclose personal information as we deem necessary to respond to a subpoena, regulation, binding order of a data protection agency, legal process, governmental request or other legal or regulatory process. We may also share personal information as required to pursue available remedies or limit damages we may sustain.
• Changes of Control. We may transfer or assign information, including your personal information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, liquidation, change in control or other sale by or of us or any affiliated entity (in each case whether in whole or in part).

How We Secure and Retain Your Personal Information

CHOP uses reasonable security measures designed to safeguard against unauthorized intrusion to the Service and the alteration, acquisition or misuse of personal information. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information and to help ensure that your data is safe and secure.  However, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us of the problem by contacting us in accordance with the “Contact Information” section below.

Use of the Service is subject to the Terms of Use. To the extent you provide confidential information through the Service, you agree to the disclaimers and indemnification provisions set forth in the Terms of Use.

We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, or as required by applicable laws, contracts, or other rules or regulations.

User Choices

You may opt out of receiving our newsletters, communications, or development appeals by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in any such emails.

You may also unsubscribe by sending an email to reply@chop.edu, submit a request to our Web Access Center or send mail to the following postal address: Marketing & Public Relations, Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, 2716 South Street, 7th floor, Philadelphia, PA 19146.

Please note that if you opt out of receiving our newsletters, this does not impact other transactional and administrative messages which you will continue to receive (such as emails relating to this Privacy Policy or emails responding to your inquiries).

Do Not Track

The Service does not currently take any action when it receives a Do Not Track request. Do Not Track is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page. For details, including how to turn on Do Not Track, visit www.donottrack.us.

Children's Privacy

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children. The Service is intended for adults and young adults age 13 and over. It is not intended for or designed to attract persons under the age of 13. We do not permit registration by, nor do we collect personal information from, any person we actually know to be under the age of 13.

Links to Other Sites

This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of the Service. The Service contains links to other sites, including sites that may indicate a connection to or business relationship with us, including but not limited to Classy (used to receive and process donations to CHOP) and DonorDrive (used to facilitate registration for Foundation events). We are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. You should read the privacy policies of each site you visit to determine what information that site may be collecting about you.  

Passwords

You are responsible for taking all reasonable steps to ensure that no unauthorized person shall have access to your CHOP passwords or accounts. It is your sole responsibility to (1) control the dissemination and use of activation codes and passwords; (2) authorize, monitor, and control access to and use of your CHOP account and password; (3) promptly inform us of any need to deactivate a password. 

California Residents

Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, also known as California’s “Shine the Light” law, California residents with whom we have an established business relationship are entitled to request and receive, free of charge, once per calendar year, information about the customer information we shared, if any, with other businesses for their own direct marketing uses in the previous calendar year. To request a copy, please contact us at reply@chop.edu. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the “Shine the Light” law requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response.

Colorado Residents

The categories of personal information we process about you is set forth in the section entitled “Information We Collect”. The purposes for processing such personal information are set forth in the section entitled “How We Use Your Data”. We share the personal information we process about you with the third parties set forth in the section titled “Sharing of Information”.

Under the Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”), you have the rights to:

• Confirm whether or not we are processing your personal information and access such personal information;
• Correct inaccuracies in your personal information, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of your personal information;
• Delete personal information provided by, or obtained about you;
• Obtain a copy of your personal information we process, in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format that allows you to transmit the data to another entity without hindrance, where the processing is carried out by automated means; and
• Opt out of the processing of personal information for purposes of:
  • Targeted advertising;
  • The sale of personal information; or
  • Profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.

You may exercise these rights by contacting us at reply@chop.edu, submitting a request to our Web Access Center or by mail at Marketing & Public Relations, Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, 2716 South Street, 7th floor, Philadelphia, PA 19146 with “CPA Request” on the subject line. In the event we deny your request, you may appeal our denial by contacting us in the same manner by which you submitted your request with “CPA Appeal” on the subject line.

We may process your personal information for the purposes of targeted advertising, and our processing may qualify as a “sale” under the CPA. Additional information about how to control cookies through your browser functionality is provided in the section entitled “Cookies and Other Technology”.

EU, UK, Swiss Residents

CHOP acts as a controller with respect to “personal data” CHOP collects through the Service, as defined by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“GDPR”), any national law of an EU member state adopted pursuant to the GDPR, the United Kingdom Data Protection Act of 2018, and the Switzerland Federal Act on Data Protection (collectively, “Data Protection Laws”).

We collect the following types of information and process and share such information to provide the Services to you. We may also process and share such information in the following ways:

Under Data Protection Laws, if you are an EU, UK, or Swiss resident, you have the following privacy rights, which you may exercise by contacting us at reply@chop.edu, submitting a request to our Web Access Center or by mail at Marketing & Public Relations, Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, 2716 South Street, 7th floor, Philadelphia, PA 19146 with “GDPR Request” on the subject line and in the body of your message:

• Right of Access. You have the right to obtain confirmation as to whether your personal data is being processed, as well as access to the personal data along with certain information, including the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned and the recipients or categories of recipients to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed.
• Right to Rectification. You have the right to rectify your inaccurate personal data and to complete any incomplete personal data, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.
• Right to Erasure or Right to be Forgotten. You have the right to erase your personal data under certain circumstances.
• Right to Restrict Processing. You have the right to restrict our processing of your personal data under certain circumstances.
• Right to Object. You have right to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, at any time to our processing of your personal data, which is based on public interest or our legitimate interests, including the profiling of data. In this case, we will stop processing your data, except for where we have compelling legal grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or for the exercise or defence of possible legal claims. You also have a right to object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
• Right to Data Portability. Under certain circumstances, you have the right to receive your personal data that you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and have the right to transmit such data to another controller without hindrance from us.
• Right to Withdraw Consent. If you have provided us with your consent for the processing of your personal data, you may withdraw your consent at any time to stop any further processing.
• Right to Lodge a Complaint. You have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority if you believe that our processing of your personal data violates the Data Protection Laws. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you approach a data protection regulator, and would welcome you directing an inquiry first to us by contacting us at reply@chop.edu.

All personal data we collect through and in connection with the Services is currently processed in the United States by us or by a party acting on our behalf. When you provide personal data to us through the Services, you consent to the transfer of your data to, and processing of your data in, the United States. The Services are currently hosted in the United States. We will transfer your personal data to the United States through the use of appropriate safeguards as required by Data Protection Laws.

As stated in the “How We Secure and Retain Your Personal Information” section above, we will retain personal data for so long as we, in our sole discretion, believe is necessary or appropriate (a) to fulfill the purpose(s) for which such information was collected, or (b) to comply with applicable laws, contracts, or other rules or regulations. You may submit a request to delete your personal data by emailing us at reply@chop.edu.

We employ technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of information submitted through the Services. However, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. We are not responsible for any interception or interruption of any communications through the Internet or for changes to or losses of data. Users of the Services are responsible for maintaining the security of any password, user ID or other form of authentication involved in obtaining access to password protected or secure areas of any of our Services. In order to protect us, you and your data, we may suspend your use of the Services, without notice if any breach of security is suspected. Access to and use of password protected and/or secure areas of the Services are restricted to authorized users only. Unauthorized access to such areas is prohibited.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

The Last Updated date of this Privacy Policy is set forth at the top of this webpage. We may change the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy at any time by posting revisions on this webpage or by notifying you of any material changes. We encourage you to return to this webpage frequently so that you are aware of our current privacy practices. The amended Privacy Policy supersedes all previous versions and by accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by all of the terms and conditions of the Privacy Policy as posted on the Service at the time of your access or use.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us through the Web Access Center or at reply@chop.edu.