The healthystmarys.com forum has been established to foster discussion and encourage the sharing of ideas and information by St. Mary’s County community members on a variety of topics. This forum is open to the public, without regard to ethnicity, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, disability, religion, or political affiliation. Our policy is to accept the majority of comments made on our discussion boards. However, we urge participants to be civil and abide by all usage guidelines established in these Terms of Use. Use of this website and any other content originally produced by the St. Mary’s County Health Department signifies acceptance of all terms and privacy policies issued on this page. In addition to prohibiting posts that are in any way a violation of State or Federal law, the Healthy St. Mary’s Partnership (HSMP) requires users to agree to and abide by the following stipulations:

• All content submitted on healthystmarys.com is considered to be in the public domain. Do not submit any personal information on this website that would lead to individual identification. Wherever possible, any concepts, ideas, or designs are also submitted into the public domain so as to promote Public Health and empower communities to connect with their constituents.  
• Use of this website is entirely optional, and in no way is connected with any personal health information or personally identifiable information maintained by any of our sponsoring agencies.
• Use of this site is intended for those age 13+ as regulated by the COPPA laws or other applicable governing doctrine.  Anyone under this age must have a parent or guardian provide documentation in compliance and observance of these regulations to participate.
• All opinions are those of the original contributor and are not to be recognized as agency or organization statements. Social media is personal in nature, and as such, any opinions may be of professional reference or experience, but do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of associated agencies, organizations, or businesses.
• Forum groups to discuss new topics can only be created by site administrators. To request a new forum group, please email stmaryspartnership@gmail.com.
• Profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, advertising, and political campaigning are not permitted. Such content may be removed. Other posts that may be removed include hate speech, nudity, intellectual property infringements, and defamation to a person or group of people. Posts that are considered inappropriate, off-topic, excessively repetitive and/or disruptive to the online community and this platform may be removed. Discussions of political views and philosophies should be addressed in other forums.
• Protected health information or personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, protected financial information, health conditions, and other confidential/private information may not be posted. If such information is found, it may be removed.
• Discussion forums on healthystmarys.com will be monitored by group administrators for compliance with this Policy. All content published on this site may be utilized for any purpose and is not considered to be private or under restricted use. 
• While social media and web forums such as healthystmarys.com are available 24/7, moderation capabilities are not. Therefore, every inappropriate comment may not be addressed right away. We trust in the maturity of the community to maintain civility on the discussion boards and to ignore personal attacks and negative speech and avoid participating in the same.
• All features of this application are designed to create public data sets licensed under the public domain, GPL v3, or MIT licensing. There are no privacy restrictions on information uploaded or created through this application. Please note that the submission of any record will be publicly visible, and will only be moderated in accordance with our social media policy.
• Note that any use of the words public, private, and hidden are used purely for front-end access control, and do not guarantee any degree of privacy. These features are designed to create a safe space for contributors to test theories prior to release, but should not be relied upon as a method to store any sensitive data whatsoever.
• HSMP will make every effort to respond to questions/inquiries submitted through the stmaryspartnership@gmail.com email address in a timely fashion during normal business hours. Be cautious of answers posted in the forums by other users, as the information they provide, though well-intentioned, may not be correct. HSMP is not responsible for the validity of claims or information posted by individual users.  
• In order to keep our community safe and clean, spam of any kind will not be tolerated. Any account found to participate in spam activity (more than 3 pieces of content created for any one topic within 24 hours, the use of any hate speech or cursing, or spreading false information) is subject to suspension. In the event that your account is suspended for spam behavior, we may reactivate your account once you have confirmed that you will not participate in these behaviors in the future. Re-activation is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. We encourage healthy discussions, but must ensure that this community is accessible, safe, and free from false information and spam.

Online safety tip!

Remember, never share any personal information online. Spammers occasionally target popular online communities, just like your email inbox. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam. healthystmarys.com will never ask for any personal information via email or private message.

MDH/Agency Terms

Maryland Department of Health Privacy Policy | MDH Accessibility Policy | Maryland Department of Health Terms of Use Statement

All updates to these policies will be posted on this page.