A federal task force that formulates recommendations for cancer screenings, heart disease prevention and other preventive services hasn’t met in nearly a year — and it’s unclear whether the panel will meet again.
The US Preventive Services Task Force, created in 1984, is an independent panel of volunteer doctors, nurses and public health experts that reviews the latest scientific findings and decides what preventive care should be covered at no cost to patients.
Under the Affordable Care Act, most private insurers must cover services that receive an A or B grade from the workforce. According to a 2022 report by the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 150 million people with private insurance — including 37 million children — would be covered by the provision. The law extends to approximately 20 million adults enrolled in Medicaid and 61 million adults in Medicare.
The task force usually meets three times a year to vote – in March, July and November. It last met in March 2025. The July meeting was canceled and the November meeting was canceled due to government shutdown. No meeting has been announced for next month.
The committee is functioning with fewer members. The term of the five members expired at the end of last year and they have not been publicly replaced, leaving the task force with 11 members instead of its usual 16.
From 2020 to 2021, Dr. Alex Crist said several draft recommendations remain pending, including an update to cervical cancer screening and an update to screening and counseling for perinatal depression.
The task force will meet more weeks, said Crist, who is no longer part of the panel. But the committee usually votes only on recommendations in three official meetings. The task force typically issues 20 to 25 recommendations each year, but published only five recommendations last year.
“They are very life-saving recommendations,” Crist said. “For physicians, the task force is our north star of what we should and shouldn’t do for prevention.”
The task force was convened by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. Health Secretary Robert F. The uncertainty surrounding the panel comes as Kennedy Jr. has reshaped other federal advisory groups.
Last June, Kennedy replaced all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. The Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) has seen drastic cuts in its public meetings.
Kennedy has the authority to appoint and fire members of the Preventive Services Task Force. According to a Wall Street Journal report last July, he privately criticized the panel as “vigilante.” Two people familiar with the internal discussions told NBC News that same month that Kennedy was considering removing all of its members. In a letter dated July 27, the American Medical Association urged Kennedy to keep the plaque unchanged.
An HHS spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether changes to the task force were still under consideration or whether the task force would meet in March.
Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California College of Law in San Francisco, said the committee’s work is intended to separate it from politics.
“Like ACIP, the USPSTF was created to provide unbiased, science-based expert advice on an issue that should be governed by science,” Reese said. “Their main job is to guide doctors. Politicizing the panel destroys that job. Doctors are less inclined to follow the guidance of a properly, deliberately biased panel.”
The panel faced political backlash several years ago when conservative groups sued HHS over the panel’s “A” rating for an HIV prevention pill known as PrEP. The case threatened the ACA’s preventive care mandate, but the Supreme Court sided with the federal government, preserving the requirement that insurers cover services recommended by the panel.
In total, the task force has 54 recommendations that should be covered by insurance. These include mammograms every year to screen for breast cancer starting at 40 for some patients ages 40 to 75 who have at least one heart disease risk factor, anxiety screenings for children starting at 8, and statins to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Four decades ago, the first chairman of the task force, Dr. Robert Lawrence said the panel considers how health risks differ across populations, including LGBTQ people and black women, who face higher maternal mortality rates than white women. He said he worried that such work would be dismissed by Kennedy as “vigilante.”
“Because of RFK Jr.’s anti-science posturing on the vaccine issue and a lot of other issues at HHS, I believe the same fate will befall the task force,” Lawrence said. He co-authored an opinion piece published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine that said dismantling the task force is an “existential threat to clinical practice.”
Task force recommendations are usually reviewed every five years as new findings emerge. Without regular meetings, updates can be delayed, Lawrence said.
A smaller panel could further slow the task force’s ability to review evidence and make new recommendations, he said.
“I fear going back to the dark ages before there was evidence-based medicine,” he said.
