USEMS - Undergraduate Sport & Exercise Medicine Society

Privacy Policy

How USEMS collects, stores and uses your data.

Last updated: October 2026

Who We Are

USEMS (the Undergraduate Sport and Exercise Medicine Society) is a national, non-profit society run by a volunteer committee of students. This policy explains what happens to your personal data when you use usems.co.uk, join our mailing list, or take part in our programmes.

USEMS is the “controller” of your data under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), meaning we decide how and why it is used. You can reach us at hello@usems.co.uk. Our committee changes each year, but the society and its responsibilities under this policy carry on.

What We Collect

What we hold depends on what you use. We only ask for what we need.

  • Account: your name and email address, plus your university, course and year of study if you choose to add them. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google, but never your Google password.
  • Events: which events you have marked as interested in.
  • Mailing list: your name, email address, university or organisation, stage of training, and anything else optional you choose to give us. You do not need an account to join.
  • Enquiries: your name, email address and whatever you write to us, through the contact form or by email.
  • Applications: if you apply to join the committee or to run a conference or event with us, the details you submit, which can include your university, year of study, a personal statement and a CV.
  • Mentorship scheme: what you are interested in and anything else you share about your experience, optionally a LinkedIn link or CV, and the messages you send to your mentor or mentee through the site.
  • Research Academy: your application answers, any note you leave when registering interest, your place in research groups, and the messages and files you share inside those groups.
  • Email delivery: when we email you, our email provider tells us whether the message was delivered, bounced or marked as spam, so we can keep the list accurate. We do not track whether you open emails or click links.

We do not ask for, and you should not send us, health information about yourself or anyone else, or any patient information. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

People Who Are Not Members

The Research Academy committee sometimes keeps the name, job title, work email address and public LinkedIn profile of clinicians and researchers it may want to invite to supervise or collaborate on a project. We collect these from public professional sources, use them only to decide whether to invite them and to send that invitation, and delete them if someone asks, or once the person has declined or not replied after our follow-up. If we hold your details this way and you would like to know, or want them removed, email us.

Why We Use It, and Our Legal Basis

UK law requires us to have a lawful reason for each use of your data. Ours are:

  • Consent for the mailing list, and for signing up to the mentorship scheme or Research Academy. You can withdraw it at any time (see “Your rights”), and it will not affect anything done before.
  • Providing what you asked for when you create an account, register interest in an event, or apply to something, so that we can run it for you.
  • Legitimate interests in running a student society well: replying to enquiries, keeping the site secure, understanding the makeup of our membership (for example which universities and courses members come from, using anonymised figures), and contacting professionals about the Research Academy. We use this basis only where it does not outweigh your rights, and you can object at any time.

We do not sell your data, we do not share it for marketing, and we do not make decisions about you using automated profiling.

Who Else Handles Your Data

We use a small number of companies to run the site. They act on our instructions and are not allowed to use your data for their own purposes.

  • Supabase: our database, sign-in and file storage (including committee photos, CVs and attachments).
  • Vercel: hosts the website.
  • Resend: sends our emails, including the newsletter, invitations and password emails.
  • Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google.

Some of these providers process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Where they do, we rely on the UK's approved safeguards for international transfers, such as the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses or the UK–US data bridge. We may also share your details if the law requires it.

Cookies and Embedded Content

We only use the cookies the site needs to work, such as the ones that keep you signed in. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies.

A few pages show content from other services, such as Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. When a page with that content loads, the provider may set its own cookies or collect technical information such as your IP address, under its own privacy policy. If you would rather avoid that, you can block third-party cookies in your browser.

Our Mailing List

USEMS runs an opt-in mailing list, open to anyone. We use it to tell you about USEMS events and conferences, educational webinars and teaching sessions, research opportunities, electives, careers and training in SEM, and relevant opportunities from partner organisations where appropriate.

To join, complete our sign-up form. By submitting it you agree to receive emails from USEMS and to this policy. Emails are sent using blind carbon copy (Bcc), or an equivalent system, so you can never see other members' addresses. We normally send one email a month, with occasional extra emails for upcoming events or time-sensitive opportunities.

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every email, or by emailing hello@usems.co.uk with the subject line “Please remove me from the mailing list”. We keep your email address on a do-not-contact list so that we never email you again by mistake.

Our Mentorship Scheme

USEMS runs an opt-in mentorship scheme connecting mentors working in Sport and Exercise Medicine with students and doctors interested in the specialty. It supports SEM career pathways, portfolio development, applications and interviews, research, pitch-side and event medicine, and networking.

To take part, sign up as a mentor or mentee from the mentorship page (this needs a USEMS account). By signing up, you agree to receive emails about the scheme and to this policy. We use what you tell us only to run and match the scheme. When you are matched, your mentor or mentee can see your name, your university, course and year or stage of training, and what you wrote when you signed up, along with any LinkedIn link you shared. The chat between a pair can be read only by the two of them on the site. It is deleted if the match is removed, and as with any online service, the people who maintain the site's database could technically access it, so please keep anything sensitive out of it.

You can withdraw at any time from the mentorship page, or by emailing hello@usems.co.uk with the subject line “Please remove me from the mentorship scheme”.

The Research Academy

The USEMS Research Academy is a members-only programme that supports student research projects. To register interest or apply, you need a USEMS account. Your application answers are seen only by the committee members who review applications. If you join a research group, the other members of that group, and the committee, can see your name and role, and the messages and files you share in the group. When someone is invited by email, we store the invited email address so we can send the invitation and recognise it when it is accepted.

Please keep project discussions free of patient information and of anyone's identifiable health data. You can ask to leave a group or withdraw your application at any time by emailing us.

Who Can See Your Data Inside USEMS

Committee members with admin access can see account details (including university, course and year of study), mailing list entries, enquiries and applications, for the purpose of running the society. Access is limited to the people who need it for their role and is handed over to each new committee when the committee changes, at which point passwords and access are reviewed. Only super admins can change another member's role or delete another member's account.

We may analyse anonymised information, such as the number of members by university or stage of training, to understand and improve the society. No identifiable information is shared as part of this.

How Long We Keep It

We keep your data for as long as it is useful for running the society, and no longer than we need. We do not delete things on a fixed timer. Instead the committee reviews what we hold at least once a year and clears out anything old, such as past applications and enquiries, and we delete your data whenever you ask us to.

  • Accounts: until you delete your account. Deleting it also removes your event interests and your mentorship and Research Academy details. Messages you posted in a mentorship pair or research group may remain, without your name attached.
  • Mailing list: until you unsubscribe, after which only your email address is kept, on the do-not-contact list.

Keeping Your Data Safe

Data is held with the providers above, protected by sign-in and role-based access, and sent over encrypted connections. No online service is completely risk-free, but if a breach ever puts your rights at risk we will tell you without undue delay and report it to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) where the law requires us to.

Your Rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

  • Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you
  • Have inaccurate data corrected
  • Have your data erased
  • Restrict how we use your data, or object to it, including where we rely on legitimate interests
  • Receive your data in a portable format, where it applies
  • Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it

Much of this you can do yourself. From your account page you can edit your university, course and year of study, reset your password, change how you sign in, and permanently delete your account. For anything else, email hello@usems.co.uk and we will respond within one month. We may need to confirm who you are first.

Complaints

We would like the chance to put things right first, so please contact us. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to This Policy

We review this policy at least once every 12 months, and when we start using your data in a new way. We will let list members know about significant changes by email. The date at the top shows when it was last updated. Our Terms of Use explain the rules for using the site.

Questions

If you have any questions about this policy or how your data is handled, email the committee at hello@usems.co.uk.