Editorial policy
How the material on this site is researched, sourced, dated and corrected.
What this site is
High Reliability Wellness explains the SCOTT Protocol, Dr. Carol J. Scott’s adaptation of high reliability safety science to one person’s health, and the evidence around it. It is written for adults managing their own health and their families’. It is educational. It is not medical advice, it can’t account for your history, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship with Dr. Scott or anyone else. Decisions about your care belong with you and a clinician who knows you.
If you think you or someone with you is having a medical emergency, call 911.
Where the facts come from
We go to primary sources and link to them inline, on the words that state the fact, so you can check any claim in one click. There is no separate reference list at the bottom of a page; the link is the citation. In practice the sources fall into a few groups:
- Clinical guidelines from the bodies that write them, such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, and the American Diabetes Association.
- Data and guidance from federal agencies, including the CDC and its National Center for Health Statistics, the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Medicare.
- Peer-reviewed studies, usually through their PubMed or PubMed Central records.
- Original documents for the history: accident reports from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Rogers Commission report on the Challenger accident, and the founding papers of high reliability research.
When a page makes a medical claim, it names the guideline and its year (for example, “the 2025 AHA/ACC high blood pressure guideline”), because guidelines change and the year tells you how current the advice is. Statistics that come from models or surveys are described as estimates. When a study is small, old or drawn from a single institution, the page says so next to the number. If we can’t confirm something in a primary source, we leave it out.
Dates and updates
Every longform page shows the date it was last updated. The guidance it cites was current on that date. When a guideline we cite is revised, we revise the page and change the date.
One body needs a special note. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendations were in flux during 2025 and 2026, with several drafts left pending. Pages that cite the Task Force therefore say what was current “as of October 2026.”
Dr. Scott’s words, and everyone else’s
The SCOTT Protocol and its five steps are Dr. Scott’s. When a page quotes her, the words come from her own published materials, such as the original SCOTT Protocol slides or her columns, and the attribution says which. We don’t write quotations for her, and we don’t write first-person stories in her voice.
Quotations from other people are copied from the source we link to. Client letters on the About page are copied exactly as The Scott Health Advisory published them, with the same attribution.
Examples, illustrations and charts
Some pages use examples to make an idea concrete. Those are hypothetical and are written that way (“Imagine…”, “Say your…”). We don’t invent patients, cases or outcomes and present them as real.
The photographs of people on health pages are illustrations, not pictures of patients. The navy pen-and-ink plates on history pages are drawings, not archival photographs. Charts that use simulated values to show a pattern say so in their description and source line; every chart has a table of its numbers and a link to its source.
Independence
The site carries no advertising and no sponsored content, and no company pays to be mentioned. It is published by Dr. Scott, who also offers paid consultations through The Scott Health Advisory and coaching through Executive Wellness Coaching. Pages that mention those services say so plainly.
Corrections
If you find an error of fact, a broken source link or advice that has gone out of date, please tell us through the contact page at The Scott Health Advisory, or call 410-336-7894, and say which page you mean. We check every report against the source. When a correction changes the substance of a page, we fix it, update the date and add a short note on the page saying what changed.
Last updated October 16, 2026.