After reviewing the community guidelines and standards for several of our fellow UT System institutions and conferring with our legal team at UTMB, we've updated our community standards for social media accounts affiliated with UTMB. The new standards better articulate the type of content, comments and posts appropriate for our sites, and outline what types of information are not appropriate.
As we say in the updated guidelines, we continue to invite our followers to post comments in a courteous and respectful manner on the content we post via our social platforms. All viewpoints will continue to be welcome, and comments will not be removed unless they violate the reasonable terms spelled out in the guidelines.
If you manage a UTMB social media account and run into a situation where you believe the policy has been violated, please reach out to us before you remove the post. We'll have the material reviewed.
The new guidelines are available below for sharing from your page. Full text is below, or you can access a Word document with the information. If you have any questions, please contact us at social@utmb.edu.
UTMB Health SOCIAL MEDIA GENERAL INFORMATION
Welcome to an official University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health) social media account. UTMB Health, a component of the University of Texas System, opened in 1891 as the nation’s first public medical school and hospital under unified leadership. What began as one hospital and medical school building is now a major academic health sciences center with five schools, a world-renowned research enterprise, and a comprehensive health system with multiple campuses and many clinics.
UTMB Health strives to provide a friendly, informative and engaging community for all our social media followers and page visitors. We ask that our community maintain a civil and respectful level of discourse on our platforms.
We invite our followers to post comments in a courteous and respectful manner on the content we post on our social media platforms. All viewpoints are welcome, and comments will not be removed unless they violate the terms of this policy.
To maintain an informative, courteous, and respectful environment, the following types of comments are prohibited:
Are illegal or encourage illegal activity.
Infringe on the rights of any third party, including intellectual property, privacy or publicity rights.
Compromise the safety or security of UTMB Health community members, the public, or public systems; or present a grave and imminent threat; or incite imminent lawlessness.
Contain language that is obscene, vulgar, threatening, or aggressive.
Contain any form of unlawful discrimination or harassing content.
Promote a business or commercial transaction.
Promote a candidate campaigning for election.
Impersonate another person or organization.
For your own privacy and protection, do not share information such as your medical record number, financial information, personal medical information, clinical images or other sensitive information to our social media sites.
Please be aware that liking, sharing and retweeting content from other individuals and organizations does not constitute UTMB Health's endorsement of such people or organizations, of any products, services or publications offered, or views and opinions expressed.
Also, please keep in mind that UTMB Health’s social media accounts are applications owned and operated by companies that have their own policies and standards governing allowable activities, including posts. Please review the terms and standards associated with the individual platforms.