Terms of Use

Effective / last updated: September 22, 2026

Acceptance of these terms

The Dependency Series is an educational website published by the Health Education Resource Center in cooperation with Adaptive Marketing Group. By visiting thedependencyseries.com, reading any page, using the on-site chat assistant or Caregiver Load Check-In, or requesting any white paper or downloadable guide, you agree to these Terms of Use and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the site or request our materials.

What this site is — and what it is not

This site explains the twelve medical conditions most often associated with a loss of independence in aging adults. It exists to help families understand what a condition typically involves and what questions to ask. It is published for general education only.

• Not medical advice. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a substitute for care from a qualified healthcare professional. Never delay or disregard professional medical advice because of something you read on this site, and call emergency services for any medical emergency.
• Not legal, insurance, or financial advice. We are not a law firm, insurance agency, brokerage, or financial institution. We do not sell, place, or recommend any insurance, annuity, investment, or care product, and we do not evaluate your eligibility for any benefit or program.
• Not a care provider or referral service. We do not deliver care, place anyone in a facility, or guarantee the availability, quality, price, or suitability of any provider, facility, or service that may be named or discussed.
• Not individualized. Our content describes what is typical across a population. Your situation, your diagnosis, your coverage, and your costs may differ substantially. Decisions about care, coverage, and money should be made with professionals who know your specific circumstances.

How our content is researched and sourced

We hold ourselves to a simple standard: if we state a fact, a statistic, or a cost figure, we tell you where it came from and we link to it so you can check our work.

• Every condition page, blog post, and white paper carries a Sources & Further Reading section listing the organizations the material draws on, with a working hyperlink to each source.
• Those hyperlinks are carried through into the downloadable PDF white papers, so a printed or forwarded copy still shows where each figure originated.
• We prioritize primary and institutional sources — government health agencies, national disease associations, peer-reviewed research, and published industry cost surveys — over secondary commentary.
• Statistics reflect the most recent figures available to us at the time of publication. Source organizations revise their data on their own schedules, and the figure on their site may be newer than the figure here.
• If you believe something on this site is inaccurate, out of date, or inadequately sourced, please tell us through the contact page. We correct errors when we can verify them.

Artificial intelligence disclosure

We want to be straightforward about how this material is produced. Much of the content on this website and in the downloadable white papers was researched, sourced, drafted, and refined with the assistance of Perplexity AI, an AI research and answer engine, which we use to locate source material, gather and compare published figures, and help draft and organize explanatory text.

What that means for you, stated plainly:

• AI assisted the research and the writing. It is a tool we use, disclosed here as a source, in the same spirit as citing any other research resource.
• The underlying facts are attributed to their original publishers, not to the AI. The hyperlinked sources on each page and in each white paper identify where a figure actually comes from, and those sources — not this site and not any AI system — are the authority for it.
• AI systems can be wrong. They can misread a source, blend two figures, or state something confidently that is outdated or simply incorrect. We review this material before publishing and cite sources so it can be independently verified, but we cannot warrant that every statement is free of error.
• Verify anything you intend to act on. Follow the source link, and confirm anything that matters to a care, coverage, legal, or financial decision with a qualified professional and with the source organization directly.

The on-site chat assistant is also an automated tool. It answers from this site's own published content and can make mistakes, omit context, or misstate a nuance. Treat its answers as a starting point for further reading, not as professional guidance.

No warranty

This site and all of its content, tools, assessments, and downloadable materials are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, currency, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, that defects will be corrected, that the site or its files are free of harmful components, or that any statistic, cost figure, or description of a condition is complete, current, or applicable to your circumstances. Third-party sources we cite are not under our control and may change or be withdrawn at any time.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Health Education Resource Center, The Dependency Series, Adaptive Marketing Group, and their respective owners, officers, employees, contributors, reviewers, and content partners will not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, savings, goodwill, or opportunity, arising out of or related to your access to or use of this site, your reliance on any content, statistic, cost figure, assessment result, chat response, or white paper, any error, omission, or outdated figure in the material, any decision made or not made about medical care, long-term care, insurance coverage, legal matters, or personal finances, or any content, product, or service of a third party we link to or name. This applies whether the claim is based in contract, warranty, negligence, strict liability, or any other legal theory, and whether or not we were advised of the possibility of such damages. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so portions of this section may not apply to you; in that case our liability is limited to the smallest amount permitted by law.

White papers, guides, and other downloads

• They are free. We deliver each white paper by email to the address you enter, with no cost and no obligation.
• One subject and one download per request. A condition page sends that condition's white paper. The complete twelve-paper collection is its own separate request from the series page.
• We use your address to deliver what you asked for. Requesting a download does not subscribe you to anything. Our email newsletter is a separate, explicit sign-up.
• You may share them, unchanged. You are welcome to print a white paper or forward the complete PDF to a family member, caregiver, or professional for personal, non-commercial use, provided you keep it intact, including its sources, disclaimers, and copyright notice.
• You may not resell or repackage them. Without our written permission, please do not sell, license, paywall, rebrand, excerpt for commercial purposes, strip the attribution or disclaimers from, or present as your own work any part of these materials, and do not use them as a lead-generation asset for an insurance, financial, legal, or care-services business.

Intellectual property

The text, white papers, illustrations, photographs, charts, assessments, page designs, and code on this site are © 2026 The Dependency Series / Health Education Resource Center. All rights reserved. The names, logos, and trademarks of the organizations we cite belong to those organizations and appear here for identification and attribution only, which does not imply their endorsement, sponsorship, or review of this site. You may read, print, and quote briefly from our content for personal or educational use with attribution and, where you publish online, a link back to the page you drew from. Any other reproduction or distribution requires our written permission, which you can request through the contact page.

Third-party links and organizations

We link to outside sources so you can verify what we publish, and we name organizations, tools, and services where doing so is editorially useful. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, accuracy, availability, privacy practices, or terms. A link is a citation, not an endorsement, and following one takes you outside this site and outside these terms. Where a relationship with an organization is anything other than editorial, we disclose it on the page where it appears.

Acceptable use

Please use this site lawfully and without interfering with it or with other visitors. Do not attempt to breach or probe its security, submit another person's email address for a download without their permission, submit false or misleading information, use automated means to harvest content or overload the site or its email endpoints, or use our forms and email delivery to distribute unsolicited or malicious material. We may limit or block access, and we rate-limit our form and download endpoints, to keep the site usable and to protect it from abuse.

Email and your right to opt out

You are always in control of whether we contact you. You can opt out of all email from The Dependency Series at any time, without giving a reason and without losing access to any page or download on this site:

• On this site — use the email opt-out form, linked in the footer of every page. Enter your address and we stop, no email link required.
• From any email we send — use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message.
• From any white paper PDF — every downloadable paper carries the opt-out address in its footer.
• By asking us — send a request through the contact page and we will remove your address manually.

Opting out suppresses further email to that address. If you afterward request a white paper or submit a form yourself, we will send the specific item you asked for, because that is a direct reply to your own request, and it does not resubscribe you to anything. For what we do and do not collect, and how to ask us to delete information we hold, see the Privacy Policy.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the site changes. When we do, we will revise this page and the "last updated" date above. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated terms. Material changes will be reflected here rather than announced individually.

Severability

If any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, that provision will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions will stay in full force.

Contact

Questions about these terms, a correction to a sourced figure, a permission request, or an opt-out can be sent through the contact page.