Community Rules and Guidelines

How we keep the IHA Health Literacy Solutions Center respectful, useful and safe for everyone.

Our Commitment

The Institute for Healthcare Advancement (IHA) developed these rules and guidelines to keep dialogue respectful and productive in the IHA Health Literacy Solutions Center. By participating in this community, you agree to follow them. We reserve the right to suspend or remove any member who violates them.

Be Respectful and Stay on Topic

  • Treat community members with respect. Focus on the content of posts, rather than the people posting.

  • Respect the purpose of the community. Use the community to share successes, challenges, resources, constructive feedback, questions and goals.

  • Don’t post commercial messages or solicit. You may tell others about a product or service you’ve found helpful, but don’t use this space to promote your own products or services.

  • Don’t distribute spam.

  • Don’t invite the entire community to join your social networks (such as LinkedIn, Facebook or X). You may invite key colleagues privately.

Share Responsibly

  • Think before you post. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want others to see or wouldn’t want connected to you. Posts in discussions and the Library are visible to others, and comments may be subject to libel and antitrust laws. Defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive or illegal content is strictly prohibited.

  • Protect privacy. Don’t share patient information or other people’s personal contact details.

  • Respect intellectual property. Post content that you created or have permission to use, and credit the content creator.

  • Note reuse limits. When sharing a resource, indicate if it isn’t available for reuse. To reuse a resource, first get permission from its owner.

Discussion Guidelines

  • State your topic clearly in the title. This helps members respond and makes past discussions easier to search.

  • Add a Health Literacy Domain. Tagging your post helps members find it by topic.

  • Send personal notes privately. Share messages such as “thanks for the information” or “me too” through a private message rather than a reply to everyone.

  • Manage your own settings. Update your notification and email preferences from your profile rather than posting requests to the group.