The task force that shapes America’s preventive care has not met in a year

An independent panel of medical experts that shapes preventive care for patients in the United States will not hold its regular meeting this month, marking one year since its members last gathered.

Now there’s growing concern that the US Department of Health and Human Services is abandoning the US Preventive Services Task Force – or pushing it into “quiet paralysis.”

Ordinarily, the task force meets three times a year – in March, July and November – but it has not met since March 2025. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email Tuesday that the task force’s first meeting of the year was postponed and “will be rescheduled in the coming months.”

The USPSTF is responsible for recommendations around cancer screenings, STI testing, counseling and other types of preventive care. Postponing meetings may delay updates to recommendations that guide patient care and insurance coverage.

Some doctors worry that this could be a sign that HHS plans to dismantle the longtime group altogether, similar to how other federal advisory groups have been restructured.

“I do worry that they could eliminate it, but I worry less about a dramatic announcement and more about quiet paralysis,” said Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician and CEO of the nonprofit AcademyHealth, a national organization for health services and policy researchers.

“The USPSTF was created in statute, so eliminating it theoretically would take congressional action, but you can still undermine it in so many ways that matter to patients and clinicians,” Carroll said. “You can slow appointments, delay the work, change the standards or reduce the staff capacity that produces the rigorous reviews.”

He added that this “quiet paralysis” appears to be happening now.

The USPSTF, established in 1984, is a national panel of 16 volunteers who issue evidence-based recommendations about preventive health services.

But “five of the 16 members’ terms ended on January 1. They have not been replaced,” Carroll said. According to the USPSTF, new members are selected by the HHS secretary.

The task force’s recommendations on clinical services guide doctors and inform insurance coverage, too. Its recommendations are given grades, and the Affordable Care Act requires that insurers cover prevention services that get an A or B grade from the group at no cost to patients.

“That’s why millions and millions of Americans can get services like colorectal screening or statin prevention without a copay,” Carroll said.

Since 1998, Congress has directed the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to convene and support the task force. Each year, the task force submits a report to Congress outlining gaps in research and highlighting areas where more focus is needed.

But last year, it did not submit its report, which is used to help inform the National Institutes of Health’s grant decision-making.

“We’ve also heard reports of turnover among the AHRQ staff who support the evidence reviews that make the task force possible,” Carroll said.

Uncertainty now looms over whether or when the USPSTF may meet again — and how that could affect doctors and patients.

“If you leave seats empty, if you delay meetings, if you hollow out the evidence staff, you can effectively disable the task force even without formally ending it. So we’re concerned, because several warning signs are stacking up at the same time,” Carroll said. “When you see multiple pieces of the normal machinery missing at once, it’s reasonable to ask whether the task force is able to do its job.”

The task force typically releases 20 to 25 new guidelines annually, said Dr. Alex Krist, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and former task force chair. But last year, it released only about five new guidelines.

“These are vital recommendations for preventive services that save lives,” Krist said, noting that he regularly depends on the task force’s guidance when he sees patients.

The task force also hasn’t been able to advance recommendations that are under review and development in the draft or research stages. Its website lists no topics in the research plan phase and 14 topics in the draft recommendation development stage, including those related to autism spectrum disorder screening, breast cancer medication, chronic kidney disease screening and behavioral counseling for sexually transmitted infections.

“It’s important to update what we do with screening as treatments change, as methods change, as technology changes. That’s true for breast cancer. That’s true for prostate cancer. It’s true for colon cancer,” Carroll said. “All of these things would be under the purview of the USPSTF.”

There are also four topics awaiting finalization of draft recommendations, including the self-collection of human papillomavirus (HPV) testing for cervical cancer for the first time. The summary of this draft recommendation dates to December 2024, and it typically takes about six months for final approval, Krist said.

The Health Resources and Services Administration updated its cervical cancer screening guidelines to include self-collected samples in January, which means it will be covered by insurers at no cost to patients under the Affordable Care Act. But most primary care doctors look to the task force for guidance, so the self-collection testing method won’t receive as much attention or adoption until the task force acts, Krist said.

The task force members were “nominated to serve in this role that is so vital for defining preventive care for our country, and they’ve been in a year of a holding pattern, which has got to be confusing for everyone,” Krist said.

“The government has abandoned the US Preventive Services Task Force,” he said. “They’ve abandoned them and sidelined them and forbid them from being able to do the work that they’re so good at doing.”

Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again movement, HHS has been focused on “the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic,” and recent actions include sweeping changes to vaccine policy, dietary guidelines and the structure of health agencies. Last year, when the prevention task force did not convene for its July meeting, concern grew that Kennedy might attempt to remove all members of the USPSTF.

At the time, the American Medical Association wrote a letter to Kennedy expressing its “deep concern,” calling for the appointed membership to continue and for regular meetings to resume.

“We urge you to keep the previously appointed USPSTF members and continue the task force’s regular meeting schedule to ensure recommendations are put forth, updated, and disseminated without delay,” the AMA wrote.

Changes to the task force could affect millions of Americans’ ability to access preventive care, Drs. Robert Lawrence and Steven Woolf wrote in an opinion piece for the journal Annals of Internal Medicine last week.

“A generation of insured Americans have grown accustomed to free mammograms, colonoscopies, oral contraceptives and other USPSTF-recommended preventive services,” wrote Lawrence, the task force’s first chair, and Woolf, its first scientific adviser. “All this is in jeopardy.”

If the task force’s standards are weakened, payers and consumers could wind up paying for “dubious screening tests or for counseling patients about vaccine risks of unconventional dietary practices,” they wrote.

Even though Kennedy cannot abolish the task force without congressional approval, he can “scuttle the USPSTF by choking off its budget and staff.”

Lawrence and Woolf voiced concern that trust in the task force could erode, as they say it has for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which Kennedy overhauled last year.

They wrote, “What is happening to scientific advisory groups under the current administration poses a larger threat to evidence-based policy and could easily return health care and public health practice in the United States to the conditions of the early 1980s.”