Editorial policy

The Everyday Heart writes about a subject the search industry calls YMYL, your money or your life, and treats the label literally. Health pages can change what a reader does on a bad night, so the rules below are structural, not aspirational: they apply to every page, and readers may hold the editors to them by email.

Sourcing

Every factual claim traces to a public institution: the World Health Organization, agencies such as the CDC and the NIH institutes, and public education material from bodies such as the American Heart Association. Sources are listed at the foot of each page. Press releases, product pages, forums and secondhand summaries are not sources. Where research is observational, the page says so, and associations are never dressed as causes.

Review and dates

Pages carry their publication date and are rechecked against their sources when guidance moves. A page that no longer matches its sources is corrected or withdrawn. The journal section records how the glossary and the checklist are maintained, and the about page describes the collective byline.

The three refusals

• No personalized medical advice: no interpretation of any reader's numbers, symptoms, tests or treatments, on the page or by email.
• No sales: no supplements, devices, programs, affiliate links or health product coverage of any kind.
• No invention: no fabricated experts, studies, statistics or experiences, and no anonymity that dodges accountability.

Corrections

A verified error is corrected on the page itself, with the date of the correction and, where it matters, the original wording struck through rather than deleted. Corrections are listed by email request and acknowledged to the reader who sent them. Small typos are fixed silently; anything a reader might have acted on is fixed loudly.

Independence and labeling

Editorial pages and any commercial cooperation are kept separate, and the sponsored content policy page defines the labeling, the rel attributes and the hard exclusions, health products and services first among them. Editorial coverage is never for sale, and the disclosure line required on commercial material is defined in advance so it cannot be negotiated down later.