How a page here gets made
Health information written by someone without a medical qualification needs to be unusually clear about what it is doing. This page sets out the rules, so you can judge the rest of the site against them instead of taking it on trust.
Six standards. Open whichever ones you want to check. Particularly the last two, which are the ones most health sites are vague about.
Who writes it, and what that is worth One named author, no review board, and no pretense of one. Standard 12 min
Every page is written and reviewed by Heath, who has bilateral clubfoot (club foot, talipes), had extensive surgery as an infant, relapsed on one side, and has a triple arthrodesis. That history is the credential, and it is a narrow one.
There is no clinical review board. Plenty of health sites imply one with a vague “medically reviewed” badge and no named reviewer. This site does not do that, because a badge you cannot check is worse than an honest absence.
The full history is here, including a plain list of what it does not qualify him to do.
What counts as a source And what is explicitly not treated as evidence, including his own experience. Standard 22 min
| Used as evidence | Used as context | Not used |
|---|---|---|
| Peer-reviewed orthopedic literature | Heath’s own experience, marked as his | Manufacturer material |
| Long-term follow-up studies | Patterns reported by many adults | Forum posts as fact |
| Established clinical guidance | What clinicians commonly say | Single anecdotes, including his |
The third column matters most. A resource written by a patient has an obvious failure mode, treating one person’s foot as the general case, and the way to avoid it is to say plainly which sentences are personal and which are not.
Separating experience from evidence The single most important rule on this page. Standard 32 min
First-person passages are written in the first person, and they are describing one man’s feet. General statements are written impersonally, and they are describing what is broadly reported or well established.
Where something is genuinely uncertain or contested, the page says that instead of picking whichever answer reads better. “Nobody knows” is an acceptable answer here and appears more than once.
You will see
- “I have a triple arthrodesis, and…”
- “Commonly reported, though the range is wide”
- “This is not well studied in adults”
- “Ask your team directly, because it varies”
You should not see
- His experience stated as everyone’s outcome
- Confident numbers where none exist
- A firm answer to an open question
- Advice about your specific foot
If you find something in the right-hand column, that is a fault, not a style choice, and it is worth reporting.
What each page refuses to cover Deliberate gaps, so pages do not compete with each other. Standard 42 min
Every page owns one question and hands the neighboring ones to the page that owns them. A page about stiffness does not also explain pain; a page about the calf does not also cover the whole exercise program.
That is partly for search engines and mostly for you. A page that tries to answer everything answers nothing well, and it makes you read three thousand words to find the paragraph you came for.
Money, and why it is stated here Clubfoot has a lot of commerce attached. This is the disclosure. Standard 52 min
Income comes from four places: paid guides, voluntary reader support, Amazon affiliate commissions on some product links, and the mobile app, where the free version carries banner advertising and an optional subscription removes it. The privacy policy sets all of that out in detail.
What is not on that list is the point. No manufacturer, clinic, brace maker, footwear brand, orthotics company or charity funds any part of this site, and none has ever been offered a say in what it says. The website itself carries no display advertising.
No page recommends a product that this site sells. Where footwear or equipment is discussed, it is described by feature (a rocker sole, a firm heel counter, a wide last) because features are testable on any shoe and brand endorsements go stale and attract pressure.
This matters more here than on most health sites. Braces, boots, insoles and private clinics are a real market, and a clubfoot resource funded by any of them cannot be trusted on exactly the questions parents most need answered.
Where reader support goes is set out separately.
Corrections, and how AI is used Two things most sites leave unsaid. Standard 62 min
Errors of fact are corrected as soon as they are confirmed, and the review date is updated. Where a correction materially changes what a page previously advised, the change is noted on the page and not made quietly. Report anything that looks wrong. It is genuinely welcome, and a resource written by one person needs it.
On AI: it is used in two ways. As a research tool, it helps search and read published studies and pull out the figures that matter. And it builds the interactive checklists and explorers on these pages. It is not used as a source. Every medical figure on this site is tied to a published study you can open, and each one is checked against that study before it goes live. Pages are also rechecked against newly published research, most recently in September 2026, and figures are updated when better evidence appears.
Everything else is Heath’s: the lived experience, the medical records and running data behind it, the verification, the decisions about what the site says, and the final say on everything published. Saying all this is part of the same principle as naming the author. You should know how what you are reading was made, and this policy is updated whenever that changes.
The line this site will not cross
Nothing here is medical advice, and no page will tell you what to do about your own foot or your child’s. That is not a legal formula at the bottom of the page; it is a working constraint that changes how each page is written.
It is why pages explain mechanisms, not issue instructions, why self-tests are framed as orientation and not diagnosis, and why so many sentences end by pointing at a clinician. The aim is that you walk into an appointment able to describe what has changed and ask a sharper question, not that you skip the appointment.
The goal is a better ten minutes with a specialist, not a substitute for one.
People also ask
Standards and disclosure
Who reviews the content?
What counts as a source?
How often is it reviewed?
How do I report an error?
Is any of it sponsored?
Does the site use AI?
How is lived experience separated from evidence?
Why does it name specific product features but not brands?
Why sources matter
What the alternatives get wrong
When pediatric orthopedic surgeons graded AI chatbot answers to common parent questions about clubfoot, about a quarter of the answers were limited or inaccurate, and only 30 percent were judged entirely safe.5 It is one reason every figure on this site is tied to a source you can open and check.
Sources