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The location you search for, in order to return nearby results

Not retained by us

Wix analytics

Site activity and visitor statistics for the pages you view

As set by the platform. Details on request

Google Analytics

Pages you visit, searches you run on the trial map, your IP address, and your approximate location at region, state, and country level

Fourteen months

Tool

What it collects

How long

Elsewhere in the United States

Your state Attorney General, or the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov

California

California Attorney General

Washington State

Washington State Attorney General, atg.wa.gov

Australia

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, oaic.gov.au

Canada

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, priv.gc.ca. Quebec: Commission d'accès à l'information

Elsewhere in the EU

Your national data protection authority

Where you are

Authority

United Kingdom, France, and the EU

Article 6(1)(a) consent, and Article 9(2)(a) explicit consent for health data

California

Authorisation under the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, where applicable

Washington State and similar states

Consent under the My Health My Data Act and equivalent laws

Canada

Express consent under PIPEDA; Quebec Law 25 where applicable

Australia

Consent under Australian Privacy Principle 3.3

Where you are

Basis

4.  Why we use it, and our legal basis

We use your information to:

  • Deliver the programme you have joined, and support you while you take part

  • Identify research opportunities that may match your health profile or location, and tell you about them

  • Contact you with follow-up questions so your record stays current

  • Contact you if your answers suggest an urgent concern about your limb or your health

  • Understand, in aggregate, where PAD care is failing patients

  • Support research, publication, education, and advocacy using information that does not identify you

  • Operate, secure, and improve our programmes

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Our legal basis is your consent, in every jurisdiction:

3.1  Common to every programme

Your name, email address, telephone number, and where you live. Your year of birth. Which programmes you take part in and when you started. Anything you tell a PAD Navigator or a coach, which they may record in your record.
 

The registry also collects your city, postal code, and sex at birth. Our walking, smoking cessation, and dietary programmes do not ask for your city or your street address.

3.  What we collect

3.2  The Global PAD Patient Registry
Your PAD diagnosis and how long it took to get it. Your symptoms, including pain, wounds, and walking limitation. Procedures and surgeries you have had, where and by whom, and any complications. Amputations, and whether one has been recommended. Other medical conditions. Medicines you take, whether you take them as prescribed, and why not if you do not. Test results you know, such as an ankle pressure reading. Smoking, diet, and physical activity. How PAD affects your daily life and your mood. What you have been told by clinicians and what you understood.

3.3  The Leg Saver Hotline and PADtrials.org inquiries
Why you contacted us, the care you have received so far, whether amputation has been recommended to you, what you are looking for, and what a PAD Navigator recorded from the conversation or from your web inquiry.

3.4  Walking programme
How you walk now and how that changes: steps and time walked, how long you walk before leg pain begins, how long and how often you rest during a walk, total walking time, total resting time, total session time, and your pain level for each session. Your symptoms, and your progress over three, six, and twelve months. How you think about your pain and what you want to be able to do. Whether you have had a procedure on your legs, on which leg, and how long ago.

We do not collect location, route, or GPS data. If you use a walking app or a tracker, where you walked stays with you.

3.5  Smoking cessation programme
How long you have smoked, what sets off the urge, and what has helped you before and what has not. How far you can walk and how much pain you have. What you think about the link between smoking and PAD, what goes through your mind when you smoke, how you weigh the risk to your legs, and what kind of message puts you off rather than helping. Whether the programme made a difference.

3.6  Dietary programme
The way you eat now, what you would like to change, what you are not willing to change, meals you eat regularly, and what you already know about food and PAD. What you took from the orientation session, and whether the way you eat has changed since.

3.7  What we do not collect
We do not ask you to upload medical records, images, or scans. We do not collect genetic or biometric information. We do not track your location. We do not obtain information about you from your doctors, hospitals, or insurers.

3.8  Sensitivity
Health information is special category data under UK and EU GDPR, sensitive information under the Australian Privacy Act, consumer health data under Washington and similar state laws, and sensitive personal information under Canadian law. We handle it on that basis throughout.

18.  Contact us

Global PAD Association, San Rafael, California, United States.

Privacy contact: Kym McNicholas, Chief Executive Officer, Kym@padhelp.org

General: info@padhelp.org  ·  1-833-PAD-LEGS (1-833-723-5347)

A postal address for formal correspondence is available on request.

 

Related documents: Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, and the consent form for the programme you have joined.

17.  Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The version number and date at the top always show the current version, and we keep previous versions available on request.

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If we make a change that materially affects how we use your information, we will notify participants directly and, where the law requires, ask for consent again.

We do not use advertising trackers, social media pixels, or data broker tools on any of our websites. We do not use website information to target advertising, and we do not sell it.

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We do not combine website browsing information with programme information. If you browse the site without joining a programme, we do not know who you are.

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Our websites are hosted by Wix.com Ltd., Strikingly, Inc., and Amazon Web Services, Inc. Our domain names are registered through GoDaddy.com, LLC, which involves no information about you. Where we download information from these tools, we keep it for twenty-four months and then delete it. Our Data Retention Schedule sets this out and is available on request.

16.  Our website

This policy covers our programmes and all of our websites: thewaytomyheart.org, padhelp.org, padtrials.org, padregistry.org, and padwalk.org. If you browse any of them without joining a programme, we collect standard technical information using cookies and similar tools to keep the site working and to understand how it is used.

Please contact us first. Most things are resolved quickly. You may also complain to:

15.  How to complain

14.  Your rights

Everyone, wherever you live, may ask us to:

  • Confirm what information we hold about you

  • Provide a copy of it

  • Correct anything inaccurate

  • Delete it

  • Stop using it

  • Withdraw your consent, at any time, without giving a reason

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United Kingdom, France, and the European Union

You also have the right to restrict how we use your information, to object to processing, to data portability, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Because our basis is consent, you may withdraw it at any time under Article 7(3).

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Australia

You may request access under Australian Privacy Principle 12 and correction under APP 13. You may complain to us first, and we will respond within 30 days. Australian Privacy Principle 2 gives a right to deal with organisations anonymously or by pseudonym; this is not practicable for our programmes, because we must be able to contact you about research opportunities and about urgent concerns.

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Canada

You may request access and correction under PIPEDA, and challenge our compliance with our privacy contact. Residents of Quebec have additional rights under Law 25, including portability and de-indexing.

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California

As a nonprofit, the Global PAD Association is generally outside the scope of the California Consumer Privacy Act. We nonetheless honour equivalent requests from California residents on the same terms as everyone else. Where the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act applies, you may obtain a copy of any authorisation you signed and revoke it in writing at any time.

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Washington State, Nevada, Connecticut, and other states with consumer health data laws

Additional rights apply, including the right to know which third parties have received your consumer health data and the right to require deletion by them as well as by us. These are set out in our separate Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy at [URL].

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How to exercise any of these rights

Email Kym@padhelp.org, or call 1-833-PAD-LEGS. If you need to write to us, request a postal address from our privacy contact and we will provide one. We will verify your identity before acting, using the contact details already in your record.

We respond within 30 days. If a request is complex we may extend that, and will tell you why. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, in which case we will tell you before doing anything.

If we refuse a request, we will explain why and how to appeal. Appeals go to Kym McNicholas, Chief Executive Officer, at Kym@padhelp.org, and are decided within 45 days.

13.  Children

Our programmes are for adults. You must be 18 or over to take part. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we delete it. If you believe a minor has given us information, contact our privacy contact.

12.  Automated decisions

We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone, and we do not profile you in any way producing legal or similarly significant effects. Matching you to a possible study is a suggestion for you to consider, never a decision made about you.

If a breach affects your information we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law. Depending on where you live, that includes the UK and EU GDPR, the United States Federal Trade Commission Health Breach Notification Rule, state breach notification laws, and Canadian and Australian breach notification requirements.

11.  If there is a data breach

We keep your information for as long as you take part, and for ten years after you leave or after your last contact with us, so research findings based on it can be verified.

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If you ask us to delete your information, we will. The one exception is information already included in a completed analysis or publication: we retain that dataset for the ten-year period, because published research cannot be verified otherwise. Everything else is deleted.

We review our records annually and delete what we no longer need.

9.  How long we keep it

Our systems are hosted in the United States. If you live elsewhere, your information is transferred there, and United States law does not provide the same protections as the law where you live. Enforcing your rights may be harder.

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United Kingdom and European Union. We rely on your explicit consent to the transfer under Article 49(1)(a) of the UK GDPR and EU GDPR, having informed you of the risks. Our hosting provider holds participant information under a written agreement covering its handling, security, subcontractors, and return or destruction at the end of the relationship. Contact our privacy contact for details of the safeguards in place.

Australia. We disclose your information to an overseas recipient with your consent under Australian Privacy Principle 8.2(b). This means the Global PAD Association is not accountable under the Privacy Act 1988 for how an overseas recipient handles your information, and you may not be able to seek redress under that Act.

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New Zealand. We disclose your information to an overseas recipient with your authorisation under Information Privacy Principle 12(1)(b) of the Privacy Act 2020. Health information about you is also subject to the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

Canada. While your information is outside Canada it may be accessible to foreign courts, law enforcement, and government authorities under the laws of that country.

8.  International transfers

We are a nonprofit. Our programmes are funded by donations, grants, and by payments from research organisations.

Research organisations and sponsors may pay us for recruitment support, for assistance identifying potential participants, and for access to information that does not identify anyone. These payments support the registry, the Leg Saver Hotline, our lifestyle programmes, and our wider work.

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We state this plainly because you should understand how our work is funded before you join. It does not change the rules above: your name, email, and telephone number are never sold, and are never given to a research organisation without your agreement to that specific study.

7.  How our work is funded

Before sharing information for research or publication we remove your name, email address, telephone number, full address, and full date of birth. We also reduce or remove detail that could identify you in combination with other information, including exact procedure dates, city, and locations with small populations. Where a figure would represent fewer than five people, we do not publish or share it.

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This work is governed by our written De-Identification Standard, which sets out the method in detail and requires every release to be checked by a second person before it leaves us. A copy is available on request from our privacy contact.

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Anyone receiving de-identified information must agree in writing that they will not attempt to re-identify you, will not permit anyone else to do so, and will not combine it with other data for that purpose.

6.  How we remove your identity

Research organisations, where you have agreed to a specific study. We do not give your name, email, telephone number, or address to any research organisation as a general matter. When a specific study appears to match you, we tell you which study it is, where it is, who is running it, and what taking part would involve. Only if you agree to that particular study do we pass your details to that team. You may agree to one study and decline another.

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Research organisations and research partners, with your identity removed. We share information that does not identify you with universities, hospitals, clinical research sites, contract research organisations, and study sponsors conducting PAD research. Section 6 explains how we remove your identity.

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Service providers. Companies that help us run our programmes process your information on our instructions and under contract. They are Immuto, Inc. dba Tellescope, which holds participant records; Amazon Web Services, Inc., which hosts the walking programme application and padwalk.org; RingCentral, Inc., which carries and records calls to the Leg Saver Hotline; Twilio Inc., which sends text messages for the walking programme; and Wix.com Ltd. and Strikingly, Inc., which host our other websites. Apple Inc. and Google LLC distribute the walking programme application and receive no information about you. A current list is available on request.

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A service provider may also create de-identified information from the data it holds for us, and may use or share that information under the terms of its own agreement with us. Information de-identified in that way does not identify you.

Where the law requires it. We disclose information if required by law, or where necessary to protect someone's safety or to establish or defend legal claims.

If our organisation changes. If the Global PAD Association merges, is acquired, dissolves, or transfers its programmes, information may transfer with it. Any successor would be bound by this policy, and we would notify participants before it happened.

What we never do:

  • We never sell your name, email address, or telephone number.

  • We never share your information with your employer or your insurer.

  • We never use it for advertising, and we never share it with advertising networks or data brokers.

  • We never publish anything that identifies you.

5.  Who we share information with

Our programmes are hosted on Tellescope, a HIPAA-compliant healthcare platform, under a written agreement requiring appropriate technical and organisational safeguards. HIPAA compliance describes the security standard the platform is built to; it does not mean our programmes are governed by HIPAA.

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Inside the Global PAD Association, access is limited to trained staff and Navigators who need it for their work. Everyone with access, including interns and volunteers, signs a confidentiality agreement before receiving any participant information. Access is removed on the day a person's engagement with us ends.

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No system is perfectly secure, and we do not promise that ours is. We do commit to appropriate safeguards and to telling you promptly if something goes wrong.

10.  How we protect it

Postal address

Available on request from our privacy contact

Telephone

1-833-PAD-LEGS (1-833-723-5347)

Privacy contact

Kym McNicholas, Chief Executive Officer, Kym@padhelp.org

General contact

info@padhelp.org

Location

San Rafael, California, United States

GLOBAL PAD ASSOCIATION

Privacy Policy

How we handle information about the people who use our programmes

Version 2.1  ·  Effective 1 August 2026  ·  Last updated 1 August 2026

1.  About this policy

This policy explains how the Global PAD Association collects, uses, shares, and protects information about people who take part in our programmes. It covers:

  • The Global PAD Patient Registry

  • The Leg Saver Hotline

  • Inquiries submitted through PADtrials.org

  • Our walking, smoking cessation, and dietary programmes

  • Follow-up surveys and PAD Navigator conversations forming part of any of the above

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It replaces our previous Privacy Policy, which covered the registry alone.

If you are a resident of Washington State, Nevada, Connecticut, or another state with a consumer health data law, please also read our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, which is a separate document at [URL] and contains additional disclosures that apply to you.

Please read this policy before consenting to join any of our programmes. The consent form you sign links to this page for exactly that reason.

2.  Who we are

The Global PAD Association is the registered trade name of Way To My Heart Inc., a nonprofit corporation registered in the State of California, United States and recognised as tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. We operate PADtrials.org, the Leg Saver Hotline, the Global PAD Patient Registry, and structured walking, smoking cessation, and dietary programmes. References in this policy to the Global PAD Association mean Way To My Heart Inc.

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For the purposes of data protection law we are the data controller for this information: we decide why and how it is used. Under Canadian law we are the organisation accountable for it.

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Where you are in the United Kingdom, our representative under Article 27 of the UK GDPR is [name], [address], [email]. Where you are in the European Union, our representative under Article 27 of the GDPR is [name], [address], [email]. You may contact either of them about any matter concerning your information, and they will refer it to us.

We are not a healthcare provider, a health plan, or a healthcare clearinghouse. We are not a HIPAA covered entity, and our programmes are not governed by HIPAA. Other laws do apply, and they are described throughout this policy.

Because we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing is as simple as giving it. Withdrawal does not affect anything lawfully done before you withdrew.

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