AABB Privacy Statement

The Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB) is committed to the protection of your personal information. We are also committed to allowing you to choose how AABB discloses and uses your personal information. Please read this policy before visiting the AABB website or before providing any personal information to AABB.

Collecting Personal Identifiable Information

AABB collects personal information in the following situations: (1) when you become a member or committee member of AABB; (2) when you buy an AABB product or service or register for an event; and (3) when you attend or speak at an AABB event or write for an AABB publication. While some of the information collected by AABB is required for purposes of processing membership requests or purchases, you may voluntarily provide other information. The type of personal information that AABB may collect could include, but is not limited to, the following:

Your name, address, phone, and email contact information;
Information regarding your education, credentials, and licenses;
Information about your professional experience and your employment and/or affiliation with healthcare entities, including your title, role, and responsibilities;
Your purchase history; and
Encrypted credit card information.

Your personal information will be stored in accordance with the AABB Document Retention Schedule, which is reviewed and updated periodically.

Please note that when you voluntarily disclose personal information (e.g., through social media, message boards, discussion groups, chat areas), your information can be collected and used by others.

Sensitive Information

Some countries consider certain personal information particularly sensitive. AABB only collects this data when voluntarily given by the individual and will use it for statistical purposes only. AABB does not share this information with third parties for direct marketing purposes. Such information may include the following:

Date of birth
Ethnicity, nationality, gender and other demographic information

Use of Personal Information

AABB processes your personal information for the legitimate interests of AABB. These legitimate interests are the commercial interests of AABB relating to disseminating information to improve transfusion medicine and cellular therapies, planning educational seminars and meetings, and serving AABB members and customers. More specifically, AABB collects and stores personal information for the following purposes:

To register individuals for AABB events (e.g., Annual Meeting, conferences);
To forward information concerning upcoming AABB events;
To arrange for speakers at AABB events and authors for AABB publications;
To provide you with products or services that you have requested or purchased;
To process your payment for AABB products, services, and events;
To determine membership eligibility and enroll you as a member in AABB;
To administer and provide you with the benefits of AABB membership;
To develop a membership directory for AABB;
To communicate with you and to respond to questions that you have raised with us;
To administer the AABB website;
To prevent and detect fraud; and
To protect and enforce our legal rights.

Disclosures of Personal Information

AABB will not disclose to or share your personal information with any unaffiliated third party except as follows:

We may share your personal information with third parties who provide services to AABB. For example, we use third parties to help manage registration for AABB events and to increase engagement with our members and customers. These service providers are prohibited from using your personal information for any purpose other than to provide this assistance to AABB, and they are contractually required to protect personal information disclosed by AABB and to comply with the general privacy principles described in this Privacy Policy.
AABB reserves the right to disclose and/or transfer personal information to a third party, if AABB has reason to believe that disclosing personal information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, other website users, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities. Additionally, AABB may disclose personal information in response to a subpoena, warrant or other court order, or when we believe in good faith that a law, regulation, subpoena, warrant or other court order requires it – or authorizes us to do so – or respond to an emergency situation.
AABB reserves the right to disclose and/or transfer personal information to a third party in the event of a proposed or actual purchase, sale (including a liquidation, realization, foreclosure or repossession), lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, transfer, conveyance or financing of all or any portion of AABB, or of any of the business of AABB, in order for you to continue to receive the same products and services from the third party.
As a global organization, our related entities or third-party service providers may be based overseas. When we provide your personal information overseas, we do so in connection with providing you with member benefits, requested information or services, or as required or authorized under law. It is possible the overseas entities, with which we share your information, may not be subject to foreign laws that provide the same level of protection of information as your country of residence or employment, or may not be subject to any privacy obligations. Overseas entities may be required or compelled to disclose your personal information to a third party, such as an overseas authority.

Visiting Our Website

In general, you may visit our website (aabb.org) without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. AABB does not require a registration or any information to view the public portions of our website. Only members of AABB may visit the “Members Only” sections and content of the website.

Each time a visitor comes to AABB’s website, we collect some information to improve the overall quality of the online experience. At the AABB website, we collect the visitor's domain name (e.g., whether the user is logged on from google.com or fda.gov), referral data (e.g., we record the address of the last URL a user visited prior to clicking through to our site), and browser and platform type. Our website contains links to other websites; these are sites that may be maintained by organizations that are not affiliates of AABB. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites, and we encourage you to use caution when visiting these sites and that you view the privacy policy posted on each site to confirm that the site's policies are acceptable to you.

Cookies

Visitors to our website should be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected through the use of “cookies.” Cookies are small text files a web site uses to recognize repeat visitors, facilitate the visitor’s ongoing access to and use of the site, and allow a site to track usage behavior and compile aggregate data that will allow content improvements. Cookies are not programs that come onto a visitor’s system and damage files. Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to the visitor that has no meaning outside the assigning site. If a visitor does not want information collected using cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows the visitor to deny or accept the cookie feature. AABB uses “cookie” technology primarily to obtain non-personal information from its online visitors to improve visitors’ online experience and facilitate their visit. AABB also uses third-party advertising technology to serve ads when you visit websites upon which we advertise. This technology uses information about your visits to websites upon which AABB advertises (not including name, address or other personal information) to serve our ads to you. You may also configure or opt-out of tracking through Google Ad Settings.

Credit Card Information

To ensure the safest possible transactions online, AABB uses high-grade encryption and the https security protocol to communicate with browser software. This method is the industry standard security protocol, which makes it extremely difficult for anyone else to intercept credit card information. Purchase of AABB products may also be made by calling our service center at (301) 215-6489.

Your Rights

You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing: membership@aabb.org). In your written request, you may:

Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision-making involving your personal information, and what transfer safeguards we have in place;
Request that we correct any errors in your personal information;
Request that we delete your personal information if our continued processing of such information is not justified;
Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;
Object to direct marketing from us; and
Object to processing for purposes of scientific, historical research, and statistics.

Where applicable under your local laws, we will not use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor disclose your information to any third parties, unless we have your prior consent, which we will seek before collecting your personal information. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the consent forms we use when collecting your personal information.

Contacting AABB with Questions, Concerns or Complaints

Should you have any questions, concerns or a complaint about this Privacy Policy, please contact AABB’s Member Services Department at (301) 215-6489 or membership@aabb.org, or via mail at AABB Member Services Department, 4550 Montgomery Avenue, Suite 700 – North Tower, Bethesda, MD 20814. If you do not want to make a long distance phone call, please email us with your contact information and best times to reach you, and we will contact you as soon as it is practical.

You are entitled to make an anonymous complaint or inquiry in relation to this Privacy Policy or your privacy rights; however, we may require you to identify yourself if required by law or it is impracticable for us to deal with your matter otherwise.

We will acknowledge receipt of any complaint within five (5) business days and will endeavor to provide you with a written response within 30 days of receipt of your complaint. There may be instances where this is not possible due to the contents of the complaint. In such circumstances, we will respond to your complaint in a reasonable and practical time.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint, AABB will be happy to provide you with contact information for the appropriate authorities in your jurisdiction. Additionally, many jurisdictions allow for private rights of action.

Disclaimers

Any material changes to the privacy policy will be posted on this page.

This policy is effective as of April 30, 2018.