Website & newsletter privacy

Updated September 7, 2026

The HERO Brief newsletter

Signing up for The HERO Brief is voluntary. We collect your email address, your newsletter consent, and the date and time of your submission through Google Forms. We use this information to maintain the subscriber list and send HERO Lab newsletter updates. Newsletter signup is separate from research participation and does not enroll you in a study.

Google hosts the signup form and stores the responses. The response list is private and requires the owner's permission to access; it is not published on this website. Loading the signup page contacts Google to display the form, regardless of your separate analytics choice. Google handles that connection under its privacy policy. We do not send newsletter email addresses or form entries to Google Analytics.

You can request removal at any time by emailing jswisher@mednet.ucla.edu with “HERO Brief unsubscribe” in the subject. Newsletter editions will also include an unsubscribe option. We retain your signup while you remain subscribed, unless you request removal.

Optional website analytics

HERO Lab uses Google Analytics on its public website only when you choose Allow analytics. Declining does not affect access to the website, research information, study contacts, or videos. This page does not load analytics.

What is measured

With permission, we measure page visits, clicks on selected study and contact links, film downloads, and video engagement. A contact-link click indicates interest; it does not tell us whether you sent an email or enrolled in a study.

Google Analytics uses cookies and collects browser, device, session, and interaction information. Google processes network information, including your IP address, when receiving requests. We configure the site to send fixed public page names and URLs without query strings or fragments, and omit referring-page URLs. We do not send email addresses, message contents, form entries, or research records in our custom events.

Advertising features, Google signals, and automatic enhanced measurement are disabled. Analytics is excluded from the lab workspace, administration, preview, and other unlisted pages. Browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control preferences keep the public-site analytics off.

Your choice

The site stores your analytics choice in your browser for up to 180 days. If you allow analytics, its cookies also expire after up to 180 days without extending their expiry on each visit. You can change your choice using Analytics preferences in the footer of any public research page.

Choosing Decline after previously allowing analytics disables collection, removes this site's analytics cookies, and reloads the page to stop the analytics script. Previously collected information is not deleted by changing this browser preference. If your browser blocks preference storage, we will ask again on a later page.

More information and contact

See Google's Privacy Policy and how Google uses information from sites that use its services. For questions about this website's analytics, contact jswisher@mednet.ucla.edu.