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Poison Center Helpline 1-800-222-1222

MCHC-Chicago Hospital Council d/b/a Illinois Poison Center
Privacy Policy
 
Effective March 31, 2021
 
MCHC-Chicago Hospital Council d/b/a Illinois Poison Center (“IPC”) is committed to protecting the privacy of all users (“Visitors”) of the https://www.illinoispoisoncenter.org/ and pperc.illinoispoisoncenter.org websites (collectively the “Website”). 
 
Pursuant to the Illinois Poison Control System Act, 410 ILCS 47/1 et seq., the IPC has been designated by the Illinois Department of Public Health as a Regional Poison Control Center, an emergency public health service and operates a 24-hour-a-day, 365-days-a-year toll-free telephone hotline to provide toxicology, hazard, and treatment information to the people of Illinois and health care providers in Illinois.  In the event of a poisoning emergency, contact a poison center immediately by calling 1-800-222-1222. 
 
This Privacy Policy describes IPC’s practices regarding past and ongoing collection, use, and disclosure of Visitor’s personal information through IPC’s Website.  This Privacy Policy applies to IPC’s Website and, by visiting and/or using the Website, you accept the practices described in this Privacy Policy.  
 
IPC’s practices for collection, use, and disclose of Visitor’s personal information through the Website will adhere to applicable federal and state laws, including but not limited to Illinois’ Personal Information Protection Act, Genetic Information Privacy Act, and AIDS Confidentiality Act, all as amended from time to time, as well as the appropriate national standards promulgated by the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
 
The term “Affiliated Entities” as used herein means any other entity that is now or hereafter, directly or indirectly, owned or controlled by, controlling, or under common ownership or control with, managed by, under an affiliation contract (such as a joint venture or partnership) with IPC or any other Affiliated Entity. 
 
Collecting Information
IPC collects information from several sources accessible to Visitors through the Website, including, but not limited to, membership enrollment, conference, webinar, distance learning, and other event registration, Website visits, newsletter subscriptions, product sales and giveaways, and third party websites.  The information collected depends on how Visitors use the Website, as detailed below:
 
Cookies
When you visit the Website, the site asks your browser to store a small piece of data (text file) called a “cookie” on your device in order to remember information about you.  Cookies are used on most websites.  The IPC uses session cookies, which are cookies that are deleted when you leave the Website, and persistent cookies, which are cookies that remain after you leave the Website so that you are recognized when you return. 
 
IPC also utilizes Google LLC’s Google Analytics (“Google”) to collect information about Visitor traffic and behavior on the Website.  Google uses its own cookies to perform this function, and the information Google gathers is governed by Google’s privacy policy, which may be found at https://policies.google.com/privacy.  IPC cannot control and is not responsible for Google’s use of information.  Google allows individuals to opt out of these analytics tracking services.  To do so, visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
 
IPC may collect or store certain Visitor information through cookies (session, persistent, or Google) including but not limited to: 
  • Your name, contact information, username, and/or purchases;
  • The name of the domain and host from which the Visitor accesses the internet (e.g., google.com);
  • The internet protocol (“IP”) address of the computer used by the Visitor;
  • The name of the browser software and operating system used by the Visitor;
  • The date and time of Visitor’s access to the Website;
  • The pages you visit on the Website; or
  • The internet address of the website from which the Visitor linked directly to the Website.
 
IPC may share, without restriction, the information collected through cookies (session, persistent, or Google).  Some web browsers can block third-party cookies, and it is the responsibility of the individual Visitor to decline those cookies if they wish.  Certain features of the Website may require cookies in order to function properly and declining cookies may affect performance of the Website.
 
IPC may use the information collected by cookies (session, persistent, or Google) to:
  • Store information so that you will not have to re-enter it during subsequent visits;
  • Track your entries, submissions, and communications;
  • Administer the Website;
  • Better manage content;
  • Improve Visitor experience on the Website and/or delivery of Website webpages to Visitors;
  • Help diagnose problems with IPC’s web servers;
  • Analyze trends;
  • Investigate security incidents;
  • Gather broad demographic information for aggregate use in order for IPC to improve the Website;
  • Deliver customized content;
  • Provide targeted advertising on other sites;
  • Monitor effectiveness of marketing campaigns;
  • Track Visitor’s movement; and
  • Conduct web traffic analyses through which IPC tracks statistics, such as which pages are visited in what order, where Visitors come from, how long Visitors spend on the Website, and which sections of the Website receive the most Visitors.
 
Information You Provide to the IPC
In some situations, you may provide your information to IPC (or an Affiliated Entity) through the Website.  Depending upon the services you utilize on the Website, IPC may request or require you to create an account and/or to provide personal information to obtain certain services, including, but not limited to:     
 
  • Biographical information such as your name, age, and gender;
  • Contact information such as your email address, mailing address, phone number, and fax number; and
  • Professional information such as your job title, position, professional title, and information about your company, business, or school.
 
Examples of when you might provide us with your personal information, include, but are not limited to, when you:
  • Register for a user profile to access the “Poison Prevention Education Resource Center” portion of the Website;
  • Register to attend an IPC or Affiliated Entity event;
  • Make a donation to the IPC;
  • Make a purchase from IPC;
  • Request materials or free items from IPC;
  • Submit contact information or feedback directly to the IPC through the Website;
  • Complete a survey or questionnaire that IPC sent you or invited you to complete;
  • Subscribe to email notifications or newsletters including, but not limited to, IPC alerts, IPC blog, or IPC Poison Tips and Updates; or
  • Contact us by any other means, such as by phone or email or through social media or the IPC blog hosted on the WordPress website (“Blog”).
 
In order to provide you with a service or product you may be requested or required to provide payment through a credit card or debit card.  Such credit card or debit card information, including payment card number, goes directly to IPC’s or its Affiliated Entities’ vendor and/or contractor.  The IPC and its Affiliated Entities do not store, process, or transmit any cardholder data.  Transactions processed on behalf of the IPC and its Affiliated Entities are fully outsourced to PCI compliant third party solutions (e.g., PayPal, Cvent, or Square).  The IPC and its Affiliated Entities are not subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards.
 
Cvent
Through IPC’s Affiliated Entity, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (“IHA”), IPC may utilize Cvent, Inc. to allow Visitors to register and pay for educational events (including, but not limited to, conferences, webinars, and other events) and to purchase publications and other products and services.  Through Cvent, Inc., IHA collects and receives certain personal information in connection these transactions, including, but not limited to, biographical information, contact information, professional information, and credit card or debit card information.  Pursuant to IHA’s Privacy Policy, the IPC may receive the personal information received by IHA from Cvent, Inc.  The information Cvent, Inc. gathers is governed by Cvent, Inc.’s privacy policy, which may be found at https://www.cvent.com/en/cvent-global-privacy-policy.
 
WordPress & Other Social Media Accounts
Through the Blog and other social media accounts, IPC collects and receives certain personal information, including but not limited to biographical information and contact information, in connection your interactions, including but not limited to commenting, on the Blog or social media accounts.  Such information collected and received by IPC shall be subject to this Privacy Policy.  The information that WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media websites gather is governed by their privacy policies which may found on their websites.  
 
How the IPC Uses Your Information Collected Through the Website
How and Why IPC Uses Your Personal Information 
IPC may use your personal information to:
  • Provide services to you, or value to the services provided to you;
  • Respond to your inquiries, requests for access to certain portions of the Website, and/or other requests or questions;
  • Create a user profile account;
  • Facilitate your registration and participation in events, purchase of products or services, and/or request for free materials or items, including, but not limited to, the use of addresses for shipping and credit card information for payment;
  • Contact you regarding your registration, purchase, and/or request for materials or items, including, but not limited to, sending you information and updates related to your purchase or sending a confirmation email;
  • Collect payments from you and send you invoices;
  • Deliver products or services purchased through the Website or over the phone;
  • Send you marketing and educational communications related to products and services that IPC or an Affiliated Entity think may be of interest to you, including, but not limited to, recommending products;
  • Collect online donations;
  • Compile (either hardcopy or electronic) a list of persons registered to attend to an event, which may be shared with third parties, including, but not limited to, other members within a group;
  • Automatically enroll you in email notifications and newsletters if you contact the IPC, complete the Poison Prevention Education course or other IPC online course, or comment on a Blog post;
  • Send you email notifications or newsletters which you have specifically requested or in which you have been automatically enrolled;
  • Send you email messages containing company news and product or service information;
  • Administer and monitor usage of the Website;
  • Investigate and mediate disputes and complaints you file;
  • Enforce IPC and Affiliated Entity copyrights, tradenames, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features or legal rights;
  • Carry out internal operations, including, but not limited to internal record keeping;
  • Assist in preparing government or private grant or contract applications; and
  • Assist and/or carry out legal or contractual compliance, including, but not limited to, responding to a subpoena and fulfilling information collection requirements under a government contract or grant.
 
IPC may also use your personal information for other purposes that are compatible with these purposes listed above and/or as otherwise specified at the time of collection.  IPC may combine the information collected from you or by Google with information collected from your use of other IPC services, collected by Affiliated Entities or IPC affiliated or sponsored organizations, or obtained from third parties.  The combined information may be used for purposes that are compatible with the purposes set forth herein.
 
Some or all of the information IPC collects from you as part of registrations for accounts, membership, events, or certain productions may be maintained in a user account.  Copies of data or information that you have updated, modified, or deleted may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the Website.
 
IPC may select and post testimonials on the Website with your prior consent.  These submissions may contain personal information.  If you provide consent for the IPC to post such content, it will be publicly available to other Visitors of the Website and IPC cannot prevent such data from being used in a manner that may violate this Privacy Policy or applicable law.  If you would like us to remove or delete the testimonial from the Website, you can contact IPC’s Privacy Officer using the information in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy and IPC will undertake all reasonable effects to delete the information from the Website.  The IPC is not responsible and has no control over other websites.
 
Disclosure of Your Information
In addition to any disclosures permitted by this Privacy Policy, IPC may disclose your personal information, including in identifiable, de-identified, anonymized, aggregated, or pseudonymized form:
  • To Affiliated Entities, joint venture partners, and third parties that are affiliated, sponsored, or endorsed by IPC or an Affiliated Entity;
  • To the extent required or allowed by law;
  • To respond to governmental official, law enforcement, or private party requests which are required by applicable laws, court orders, warrants, subpoenas (whether civil, criminal, or administrative), governmental regulations;
  • For Contracts, Grants, and Cooperative Agreement application, administration, compliance, and reporting;
  • In situations involving a serious and imminent threat to the safety of a person;
  • As necessary for legal or contractual compliance purposes;
  • As necessary to enforce IPC’s or Affiliated Entities’ rights in connection with the Website;
  • If IPC or an Affiliated Entity sells or transfers all or a portion of a respective company’s business interest, assets, or both, or in connection with a corporate merger, consolidation, restructuring, or other company change;
  • To IPC’s and/or Affiliated Entity’s vendors and contractors if necessary in order to provide you with a service and/or product and/or to administer the Website;  
  • As specified at the time of collection (e.g., as described in survey materials); and
  • To third parties in connection with the transaction (e.g., a list of registrants provided with program materials).
 
IPC may use third party vendors to perform certain services on IPC’s behalf, including, but not limited to, hosting the Website and/or IPC’s email server, processing your payments, maintaining, enhancing, or adding functionality to the Website, operating Website features, fulfilling and processing orders, collecting web analytics data, and enabling IPC to send you emails.  IPC may share your personal information with these third party vendors solely to enable them to perform such services for IPC.  IPC requires that those third party vendors maintain at least the same level of protection that IPC maintains for such data.  Some vendors may process your data outside of the United States.
 
IPC reserves the right to use, transfer, sell, and share aggregated data, which does not include personal information, about Website Visitors as a group for any legal business purpose, including, but not limited to, analyzing usage trends.  IPC does not provide your personal information to parties unconnected with the products and/or services IPC receives or that IPC or an Affiliated Entity provides.  IPC will not disclose your personal information to third parties except in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
 
IPC is not responsible for the processing of your personal information or any of your personal information by any third party except those third parties acting as IPC’s subcontractors to process the data on IPC’s behalf. 
 
How to Change or Update Your Information
You can access, change, or update personal information you have provided and your preference regarding information you receive from IPC by contacting IPC’s Privacy Officer using the information in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy.  IPC will implement any requested changes as soon as reasonably possible, subject to reasonable limitations, including, but not limited to, the need to verify your identity.  When you edit your personal information, the data and personal information you remove may remain in IPC’s databases or backup media because it is not always possible to completely remove or delete data from those locations.
 
You have a right to request updates or changes to your preferences regarding receiving future promotional or informational messages from IPC.  To exercise this right, please send your request to IPC’s Privacy Officer using the information in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy.  Please note that if you opt out of receiving promotional or marketing emails, you may still receive certain communications from IPC or its Affiliated Entities, including, but not limited to, administrative and services announcements and messages about your account.
 
Security
IPC has implemented and maintains commercially reasonable, generally accepted industry security standards to protect against unauthorized access by third parties to the information transmitted or provided to IPC via the internet or otherwise.  Data transmission over the internet is never one hundred percent secure; IPC cannot guarantee the security of any data or personal information you transmit or provide to IPC or from IPC’s Website; therefore, you use the Website and you communicate with IPC at your own risk.
 
If you have a user account through the Website, you are responsible for protecting the security of your username and password.  You are responsible for any transaction made using your username and password.
 
All credit card data, passwords, and contact forms you submit via the Website are encrypted prior to transit over the internet using Transport Layer Security (formerly known as “SSL”). 
 
Links to Other Websites
The Website contains links to third party content and websites that IPC does not control.  This includes links to clients, sponsors, government agencies, and partners.  In addition, IPC and Affiliated Entities may maintain a presence on third party websites, such as Facebook®, YouTube®, Twitter®, or WordPress©.  If you click on these links and/or choose to access the third party websites, those third parties may use, view, edit, or set their own cookies to collect your data and you are subject to the privacy notice of such third parties websites.  You should read the third parties’ privacy notices to learn how they will collect and use your data as their policies may differ from IPC’s and will apply to your use of their websites.  IPC is not responsible for the privacy notice, policies, or practices or the content of third party websites, nor is IPC or any Affiliated Entity responsible for any third party website’s collection or protection of your data or your personal information.
 
The Website may contain functionality which enables you to import profile information or contacts from third party services (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.) (collectively “Third Party Social Media Accounts”).  If you choose to do this, you may have to log into the applicable Third Party Social Media Account, using such account’s user name and password.  The copy of the information received by IPC shall be subject to this Privacy Policy.  However, any data maintained in Third Party Social Media Accounts and by such third party service and your use of that third party service will be subject to that third party’s terms of use and privacy policy.
 
Privacy of Children 
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act governs the online collection of personal information from children less than 13 years of age.  The Website is a general audience website that does not knowingly collect information from children younger than the age of 13 and the Website is not directed at, or intended for use by, children under the age of 13.  If you believe your child under the age of 13 may have provided IPC with personal information, you can contact IPC’s Privacy Officer using the information in the Contact Us section of this Privacy Policy and IPC will undertake all reasonable effects to delete this information.
 
The Website allows for individuals and children 13 years of age and older living or working in Illinois to register for an account in order to participate in the Poison Prevention Education course.  The IPC may use and disclose the personal information collected to create the account as permitted herein.  In accordance with 325 ILCS 17, the IPC will not purchase or sell the personal information of children under the age of 16 without parental consent. 
 
While the IPC is aware students may take or complete the Poison Prevention Education course, the IPC is not an “operator” within the meaning provided under 105 ILCS 85, nor is this Website or the Poison Prevention Education course used primarily for “K through 12 School Purposes” (as such term is defined by 105 ILCS 85) or designed and marketed for K through 12 School Purposes.  Furthermore, the IPC is not considered under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to be a third party vendor of schools to which the schools outsources duties and have direct control over the IPC regarding the use and maintenance of educational records.
 
Use of Website; Updates to the Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy applies to and governs the Website and supersedes any and all previous privacy notices governing the same.  IPC may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, at any time, without notice to Visitors by posting a new version to IPC’s Website.  Visitors should visit this page periodically to review any changes to this Privacy Policy and ensure you agree with any such changes.  If IPC makes any changes to this Privacy Policy, IPC will post the revised Privacy Policy to the Website and update the effective date above to reflect the date of the changes.  By continuing to use the Website after any such changes, you accept the Privacy Policy as modified.  IPC will keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.
 
If for any reason, IPC would like to use or disclose your information for substantially different purposes other than those outlined at the time the information was originally collected, IPC will affirmatively request permission from you to use such information for those substantially different purposes prior to using or disclosing the information.
 
If you choose to visit or use the Website, your visit, use, or dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and IPC’s Terms of Use.
 
Contact Us
If you have a complaint, dispute, or any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact IPC’s Privacy Officer at:  
 
Illinois Health and Hospital Association
Attn: Privacy Officer
1151 E Warrenville Road
Naperville, IL 60566
 
Email: legal@team-iha.org
Telephone: 630-276-5506
 
You may also contact IPC’s Website administrator (a) by U.S. postal mail at the same mailing address listed above for the Privacy Officer, (b) by emailing webmaster@team-iha.org, or (c) by calling 630-276-5400.
 
IPC will respond to your complaint, dispute, question, or other inquiry within thirty (30) days of receipt.
 
 

Poison Center HelplineCalls are free and confidential.

  1. In Case of Emergency

    Call 911 if someone is unconscious or is having difficulty breathing.

  2. Remain Calm

    Most poison emergencies can be resolved quickly over the phone.

  3. Call the Helpline

    Call 1-800-222-1222 if you are concerned that you or someone else has been exposed to a potentially harmful substance.