Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy For HowMedWorks.com

Last updated: October 2026

This page has two parts. Our Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, and the choices you have. Our Terms of Use explain the rules for using our website and buying our study guides.

Both cover howmedworks.com and our study guide store at go.howmedworks.com. The HMW Study Companion app and the PA Specialty Quiz have their own privacy pages, at app.howmedworks.com/privacy and quiz.howmedworks.com/privacy, and those apply when you use them.

Privacy Policy

The short version

• We collect your name, email address, and what you bought when you buy a study guide, and your email address when you join our email list. We never see your card number.
• We use cookies and tracking pixels from Google and Meta to understand how people find us and to show and measure our ads.
• We do not sell your personal information for money.
• You can unsubscribe from our emails at any time, and you can ask us to show you, correct, or delete the information we have about you.

Who we are

HowMedWorks makes study guides and other resources for physician assistant (PA) students. In this policy, “HowMedWorks,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean HowMedWorks. Questions about this policy go to phoebe@howmedworks.com.

Information you give us

• When you buy a study guide. Checkout on go.howmedworks.com happens on Stripe’s secure checkout page. Stripe collects your payment details and tells us your name, your email address, your billing country and postal code, and what you bought. Your card number never reaches us. Some products, such as coaching, are sold through Kit’s checkout at howmedworks.kit.com, which works the same way.
• When you join our email list. If you sign up through one of our forms, we receive your email address and any name you give.
• When you email us. We keep your message and our reply so we can help you.

Information collected automatically

When you visit our sites, your browser shares some information automatically, and we use cookies and similar tools to collect more.

• Log data. Our hosting providers record your IP address, browser type, the pages you request, and the date and time. They use it to deliver pages and to protect the sites from abuse.
• Analytics. We use Google Analytics, set up through Google Site Kit, to count visits and to see which pages people read, how long they stay, how they arrived (for example, from a search or an ad), roughly where they are, and what kind of device they use.
• Advertising pixels. We use the Meta Pixel for our Facebook and Instagram ads and the Google tag for our Google ads. They tell Meta and Google which of our pages you viewed. On go.howmedworks.com they also report when you view a guide, start checkout, sign up for our email list, or finish a purchase, along with the guide’s name and price. If you are signed in to Meta or Google, they may connect this to your account with them.
• Visits across our sites. Our Google tag passes a visit identifier between howmedworks.com, go.howmedworks.com, and howmedworks.kit.com, so a visit that starts on one of these sites and ends in a purchase on another counts as one visit. If you arrive from an ad or an email, go.howmedworks.com also carries the link’s campaign tags onto the links you click next.
• A purchase in progress. When you click a buy button on go.howmedworks.com, the guide and its price are saved in your browser’s session storage so the purchase can be counted correctly. It is cleared when checkout finishes or when you close the tab.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a website saves in your browser. These are the main ones on our sites:

• Google Analytics (_ga and cookies starting with _ga_): tell one visitor from another, for up to 2 years.
• Google Ads (_gcl_au and similar): connect ad clicks to purchases, for about 90 days.
• Meta (_fbp and _fbc): connect visits and ad clicks to our Facebook and Instagram ads, for about 90 days.
• Kit: keep checkout at howmedworks.kit.com working and protect it from bots. If you arrive from one of our emails, the Kit plugin on howmedworks.com may save your Kit subscriber ID so the site recognizes you as a subscriber.
• Videos: some posts include YouTube or Vimeo videos. They load only when you press play, and then YouTube or Vimeo may set their own cookies.
• Translation: if you choose another language from the language menu, the page text is sent to Google Translate, and a cookie remembers your choice.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking advertising and analytics cookies will not stop you from reading our sites or buying a guide.

How we use your information

• To deliver what you buy: emailing your download links and your Study Companion unlock code, and helping if something goes wrong.
• To send you email. When you join our list or buy a guide, we add your email address to our Kit list and note what you signed up for or bought, so we can send study tips, guide updates, and offers. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link.
• To learn which pages and resources help PA students most, and to improve them.
• To show our ads to people likely to find them useful, and to measure whether they work.
• To protect our guides: to mark copies with buyer information, to trace a shared copy back to the purchase it came from, and to enforce our Terms of Use.
• To keep records for taxes and accounting, to prevent fraud, and to follow the law.

Who we share it with

We share information only with companies that help us run HowMedWorks, each for a specific job:

• Stripe: takes payments on go.howmedworks.com.
• Kit: runs our email list, and the checkout for products sold at howmedworks.kit.com.
• Resend: sends your purchase emails, with your download links and unlock code.
• Cloudflare: stores the guide files and delivers your downloads. Download links expire after 7 days.
• Supabase: the database behind the HMW Study Companion, where your unlock code is stored with the email address you bought with.
• WPX and Netlify: host howmedworks.com and go.howmedworks.com.
• Google: Analytics, Ads, and Site Kit as described above, the fonts on our pages, and translation if you use the language menu.
• Meta: the Meta Pixel for our Facebook and Instagram ads.
• YouTube and Vimeo: videos in some posts.
• Amazon: if you click one of our Amazon links, Amazon knows the click came from us so we can earn a referral fee. We see only totals of what was bought through our links, never who bought it.

Each of these companies handles information under its own privacy policy. We may also share information if the law requires it, with our lawyers and the courts to enforce our Terms of Use or protect our rights, to protect someone’s safety, or as part of a sale or transfer of HowMedWorks.

Advertising and how to opt out

We do not sell your personal information for money. Our ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google do use the pixel and tag information described above, and some US state privacy laws call this kind of ad targeting “selling” or “sharing” personal information, even though no money changes hands. To limit it:

• Change your ad settings with Meta and Google.
• Install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
• Block third-party cookies in your browser, or use a browser or extension that blocks trackers.

Google explains how it uses information from sites like ours at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Browsers’ “Do Not Track” signals have no common standard, so our sites do not respond to them.

How long we keep it

• Order records: as long as tax and accounting rules require.
• Email list: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it. After you unsubscribe, Kit keeps a record of your address so you are not emailed again.
• Analytics data: no more than 14 months in Google Analytics.
• Emails you send us: as long as we need them to help you.
• Study Companion records, including unlock codes: see the Study Companion privacy page.

Your rights and choices

You can ask us to:

• show you the personal information we have about you;
• correct it;
• delete it, except records we must keep for taxes and accounting;
• stop sending you marketing email (the unsubscribe link in any email does this too).

Email phoebe@howmedworks.com. We may need to confirm the request comes from you, usually by replying from the email address we have on file. We will answer within 30 days.

Depending on where you live, including some US states, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, you may have more rights, such as the right to opt out of targeted advertising or to complain to a data protection authority. We will honor the rights your local law gives you, and we will not treat you differently for using them.

Visitors outside the United States

HowMedWorks is based in the United States, and our providers store information in the United States and other countries. If you visit from somewhere else, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States. Where the law asks for a legal reason to use your information, ours are: to fulfill your order, your consent (for marketing email and, where required, cookies), our legitimate interest in running, improving, and promoting HowMedWorks, and our legal obligations.

Health information

Our articles and guides teach about medicine, but we do not ask for your health information and do not want it. Please do not send us details about your own medical care or anyone else’s. Because our analytics and advertising tools record which pages you visit, they may record that you read an article about a health topic.

Children

Our sites are made for PA students and other adults. They are not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

Security

Our sites use secure (HTTPS) connections, payments are handled by Stripe, and we limit who can see customer information. No way of sending or storing information online is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change affects how we use information we already have, we will also tell our customers by email.

Contact

Questions or requests about your privacy: phoebe@howmedworks.com.

Terms of Use

These terms are an agreement between you and HowMedWorks about using howmedworks.com and go.howmedworks.com and buying our study guides. By using these sites or buying a guide, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the sites. The HMW Study Companion app has its own terms of service.

Educational content, not medical advice

Everything on HowMedWorks, including articles, study guides, videos, and emails, is for education. It is not medical, legal, insurance, or financial advice, and it does not create a clinician and patient relationship.

Do not use our content to diagnose or treat yourself or anyone else. Talk to a qualified clinician about your health. In an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number.

Medicine changes, and study material can contain errors or go out of date. Check anything you rely on against a current, authoritative source. Your exam results are your own work, and we do not guarantee any score or outcome.

HowMedWorks is an independent study resource. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the NCCPA, PAEA, or any PA program.

Buying study guides

• By buying a guide, you agree to these terms, including the license and the rules on sharing below.
• Prices are in US dollars and are shown before you pay. Payment is taken by Stripe on go.howmedworks.com, or by Kit at howmedworks.kit.com. We never see your card details.
• Study guides are digital PDF files. After you pay, we email your download links to the address you used at checkout. Links from go.howmedworks.com expire after 7 days, so please save your files.
• A guide purchase may also include access in the HMW Study Companion, as described on the product page. That access is covered by the Study Companion’s own terms.
• Because guides are digital files delivered right away, all sales are final. If your download does not arrive, a file will not open, or you were charged twice, email us and we will fix it. Nothing here limits any refund right you have under the law.

Your license to use our study guides

HowMedWorks is a small business, and our guides exist because each student buys their own copy. That is why each guide is licensed to one person: the buyer.

Buying a guide gives you a license to use it for your own studying. It does not make you the owner of the guide or give you the right to pass it on. Our guides are protected by US copyright law. Any use these terms do not allow is a breach of this agreement and may also be copyright infringement.

You may:

• download the guide and keep it on your own devices;
• print a copy for yourself;
• make your own notes and flashcards from it, for your own use.

You may not, and may not help anyone else to:

• share a guide, any part of it, or your download link with anyone else, including classmates, study partners, and your cohort, even if you split the cost;
• upload or post a guide anywhere, including shared drives (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud), study sites (Course Hero, Quizlet, Scribd), group chats and communities (GroupMe, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Reddit), social media, or a school’s learning system;
• send a guide to anyone by email, text, AirDrop, or any other way;
• copy pages for anyone else by photographing, screenshotting, scanning, or retyping them, or turn them into decks, question banks, or summaries for others;
• sell, rent, or lend a guide, or use it to teach or tutor;
• upload a guide to AI tools or chatbots, which may store and reuse what you give them, or use it to train an AI model;
• remove the copyright notice or any buyer details marked on a guide.

If a classmate wants a guide, please send them to go.howmedworks.com. If you are not sure whether something is allowed, email us and ask.

Each guide is licensed to the email address used to buy it, and we may mark each copy with the buyer’s details so that a shared copy can be traced to its purchase. Please keep your files and download links private.

If a guide is shared

We take sharing seriously. If you break this license:

• your license ends, and you must delete every copy you have;
• we may turn off your downloads and your HMW Study Companion access, without a refund;
• we may ask any site that hosts a copy to take it down;
• you agree to pay us the full price of the guide for each person who received a copy, which is a reasonable estimate of the sales we lost. This does not limit our rights under copyright law;
• we may ask a court to order you to stop sharing.

In any legal action about these terms, the side that wins may recover its reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs. These obligations continue after your license ends.

Our other content

HowMedWorks owns the articles, images, videos, and other materials on our sites. You are welcome to read them and to share links to them. You may not:

• republish our articles elsewhere, beyond a short quote with a link back to the original;
• scrape or copy our sites in bulk, or use our content to train AI models or to build a competing product.

Using our sites

Please do not misuse our sites. That includes trying to break or overload them, getting around security or access limits, using them to send advertising or spam, and using them in any way that breaks the law or harms someone else.

Affiliate links

Some of our links to products are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Amazon asks us to say it plainly: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Links to other sites

Our sites link to websites we do not run, such as Amazon, YouTube, Kit, and Stripe. We are not responsible for their content or their privacy practices, so please read their policies.

Disclaimers

We work hard to keep our content accurate, but our sites and everything on them are provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not promise that the sites will always be available or free of errors.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, HowMedWorks is not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of our sites or our content. Our total liability for any claim about a purchase is limited to the amount you paid for it.

Governing law and courts

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York and by US federal law, without regard to conflict of laws rules. Any legal action about these terms, our sites, or our guides will be brought in the state or federal courts located in New York, and you agree to the jurisdiction of those courts. We may also ask any court with jurisdiction to order a stop to the sharing of our guides or any other copyright infringement. Nothing in these terms takes away rights that the consumer protection laws where you live give you.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed. Using our sites after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms or an order: phoebe@howmedworks.com.