Editorial Policy and Medical Review Standards
What ChemicalPeel.org is
ChemicalPeel.org is a patient education resource about chemical peels and related skin treatments. We are not a clinic and we do not diagnose, treat, or prescribe. Nothing on this site replaces a consultation with a licensed clinician who can examine your skin and review your medical history. If you think you are having a complication after a treatment, contact the clinician who treated you; if you have signs of a serious reaction, call 911 or go to urgent care.
Who writes our content
Pages are drafted by the ChemicalPeel.org editorial team, which includes health writers and editors, and by licensed clinicians who practice at Express Med Spa and Catara Med Spa. Our standard is that every page names its writer. Pages published before this policy took effect do not yet carry a writer’s name. Writers may use AI writing tools to help structure a draft or summarize source material. No draft reaches the site without a human editor. A clinical review by a named licensed clinician is a further, separate step from writing, and a page may claim one only once that clinician has completed the record described below. The reviewer is named separately from the writer, and a reviewer is not listed as a page’s author unless that clinician also wrote the page. As of September 7, 2026 the homepage is the only page carrying a named review.
Who reviews our content
A page may claim clinical review only when a named clinician has actually reviewed it. Where that has happened, the page carries a review record naming the clinician, their credential and the date of the most recent review, and the reviewer is never the same person who wrote the page. Pages without such a record are presented as patient education and make no review claim.
Reviewer eligibility depends on licence type and scope of practice:
- Physicians (MD or DO) and advanced practice registered nurses (APRN, including nurse practitioners) with an active licence in good standing may review and sign any clinical page, including pages about candidacy, contraindications, medication interactions, medium and deep peels, and pregnancy or breastfeeding considerations.
- Registered nurses (RN) with an active licence in good standing may review and sign pages whose medical content falls within nursing scope: what to expect on treatment day, aftercare and recovery, superficial peels, warning signs and when to seek care, and safe use of at-home products. Pages that also cover candidacy for medium or deep peels, contraindications, or medication interactions are countersigned by a physician or APRN.
- Licensed estheticians, medical assistants, and other clinic staff may contribute first-hand descriptions of procedures, products, and aftercare routines. Where they do, they are credited as contributors with their credential; no page carries such a credit today. They do not sign medical reviews.
- Editors, writers, and marketing staff are never listed as medical reviewers.
We have not independently checked any reviewer’s state licence. Stefanie Drozd’s National Provider Identifier was checked against the federal NPPES registry on August 29, 2026; that confirms an NPI record, not current state licensure or good standing. We will show a state licence verification date only once we have run the lookup in the applicable state database.
What a medical review means
A review is not a read-through. Before a page may display a review claim, the reviewer works from a claim list: every statement about how a treatment works, how well it works, who it is and is not for, its risks and side effects, recovery timelines, safety at home, and cost is listed and matched to a source. The reviewer records the sources checked, the scope of the review, the page version, and the date, and confirms in writing that each claim is supported. That record is kept for every version of the page. No page published today has a completed record, which is why no page currently displays “Medically reviewed” or names a reviewer as having reviewed it. Our reviewers page names the three clinicians who have agreed to review for the site; that is not a review record for any page. A page displays them only once its record exists.
Our evidence standards
When sources disagree, we rank them in this order and say so on the page where it matters:
- Regulatory labels and safety communications from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and current clinical guidance from professional bodies such as the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses in peer-reviewed journals indexed in PubMed.
- Randomized controlled trials.
- Cohort and observational studies, and peer-reviewed clinical references such as StatPearls.
- The written protocols and first-hand clinical experience of our reviewers, which are always labeled as clinic practice rather than as research findings.
- Outcome and pricing data from Express Med Spa and Catara Med Spa, which are always published with the number of patients, the date range, the method, and the limitations.
Manufacturer materials are used only to describe what a product contains, never as evidence that it works. We do not cite retailer blogs, content aggregators, social media, or AI-generated text as sources. Our standard is that every clinical page lists its sources at the bottom with a publication year and a link. Pages published before this policy took effect do not yet carry a source list.
Cost information
Prices on this site are estimates. Where a figure comes from our affiliated clinics we say so and give the date. Where it comes from a published survey we cite the survey and year. We never present a price as a quote, and we do not attribute a dollar figure to a source that did not publish it.
Photographs
Before-and-after photographs are published only with the written consent of the person shown, and each is labeled with the treatment, the interval between photographs, and the clinic that provided it. We do not use stock images or images from other websites as clinical results.
Review interval
Once a page has completed its first documented review, we re-review it at least every twelve months, and at least every six months where it covers safety, aftercare, contraindications, at-home use or cost. A page is re-reviewed sooner when a regulator or professional body changes its guidance, when a product label changes, when a reader reports a possible error, or when the page is materially edited. The date shown on a page is the date of the most recent completed review, not the date of the last edit. No page has completed a first review yet, so this schedule is not yet running on any page.
Corrections
If we find or are told about an error, we correct it. Material corrections, meaning anything that could change a reader’s decision about a treatment, are made within two business days of confirmation, and a dated correction note is added to the bottom of the page. Minor edits such as typos are corrected without a note. To report an error, email seo@thesearchsherpa.com and include the page URL. Our standard is to acknowledge every report.
Safety concerns and adverse events
We cannot give individual medical advice and we cannot assess your skin through a website. If you contact us describing a reaction to a treatment, we will reply with guidance to contact the clinician who treated you or to seek urgent care, and we will not offer a diagnosis. If the report suggests that something on this site is wrong or unsafe, the page is escalated to the Lead Medical Reviewer the same business day, the affected statement is removed or corrected pending review, and the correction process above applies. Suspected reactions to an FDA-regulated product can be reported directly to the FDA MedWatch program. We do not store medical details you send us beyond what is needed to respond.
Advertising, listings, and affiliations
ChemicalPeel.org is published by a medical spa marketing agency that provides paid marketing services to Express Med Spa and Catara Med Spa, and our medical reviewers work for or own those clinics. That relationship is explained in full in our disclosure statement. Clinic and clinician listings, when that section of the site opens, will be kept separate from our educational pages; being listed will never be a condition of, or influence, what those pages say. Advertising and sponsored placements, if any, are labeled as such.
Use of AI tools
Our writers and editors may use AI tools to outline, summarize sources, check consistency, and draft text. AI tools do not decide what the site says. Our standard is that every page carries the names of the people responsible for it; pages published before this policy took effect do not yet do so. Where a page carries a clinical review record, every clinical statement in it has been checked against a source by the named human reviewer. We do not publish AI-generated images as clinical results.
Disclosure statement
ChemicalPeel.org is published by a medical spa marketing agency that provides paid marketing services to Express Med Spa, a nurse practitioner led medical spa group with four clinics in the Chicago area, and Catara Med Spa in Algonquin, Illinois.
Our medical reviewers are employed by, or are owners of, those clinics. Stefanie Drozd, MSN-APRN, our Lead Medical Reviewer, is the founder of Express Med Spa and the Medical Director of Catara Med Spa. Our other two reviewers, Tami Willett, RN and Lily Zelaya, RN, are aesthetic nurse injectors on staff at those clinics. All three are paid by the clinics, not per page reviewed. The publisher sells marketing services to medical spas, including clinics that the site may review or list, creating a commercial interest in how those businesses are presented. They are paid by the clinics, not per page reviewed, and their pay does not depend on what this site publishes or on how it performs.
Both clinics offer chemical peels. That means the people we ask to check our content have a commercial interest in people choosing professional treatment. We manage that in three ways. First, we say it here, and on any page that carries a review record we say it under the byline. Second, a reviewer checks claims against the outside sources listed on the page, not against clinic marketing. Third, pages describe when a peel is not appropriate, when an at-home product is reasonable, and when to choose no treatment at all, and a review covers those statements as well as the rest of the page.
The listings section we are building may include Express Med Spa and Catara Med Spa. If it does, their listings will be labeled “affiliated clinic”. We will not rank, feature or recommend providers on the basis of that affiliation, and educational pages do not steer readers to a specific clinic.
We do not currently accept payment from product manufacturers. If that changes, the affected pages will say so. Links to products, if any, are labeled and never appear inside a clinical explanation.