HHS

USPSTF refill draws AMA warning over lack of primary care

September 18, 2026

Clinical takeaway: USPSTF recommendations that guide screening, counseling, and preventive medication decisions will now come from a panel that is half new and heavier on subspecialists. Watch for potential shifts in pending topics as the reconstituted task force resumes work.

Few federal bodies reach into the exam room as directly as the US Preventive Services Task Force. An A or B grade from the panel does more than shape practice. Under the Affordable Care Act, most insurers must cover A- and B-graded services without cost sharing, helping make services such as colorectal cancer screening and preventive statin therapy available to eligible patients with no copay. The panel behind those grades has long been drawn from primary care and prevention, from internists and family physicians to pediatricians and nurses. But for the past year, it has not met.

For months the question was whether HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would rebuild the panel at all, and with whom. The Supreme Court turned back a constitutional challenge in June 2025 that would have voided the no-cost coverage requirement, while also affirming the secretary's authority to appoint and remove members before their terms end. Reporting that he planned to replace the roster wholesale drew formal objections from leading physician groups. Nominations for the vacant seats did not open until late April. This week's slate of additions ends the wait, handing a stalled pipeline of recommendations to a panel Kennedy says is strengthened to ensure it "follows the evidence wherever it leads."

"Its credibility has been built on a membership grounded in prevention and primary care—the physicians who routinely deliver preventive services and understand how recommendations translate into clinical practice," Willie Underwood III, MD, MSc, MPH, president of the American Medical Association, said of the task force in a statement. "The composition of this new slate represents a significant departure from the Task Force's traditional membership."

"We believe maintaining a strong primary care voice must remain central to its work," he continued. "As the USPSTF moves forward, its recommendations must continue to be based on a transparent, rigorous, independent scientific process and informed by the perspective of physicians who deliver preventive care to patients every day. This is essential for ensuring that task force recommendations are trusted by clinicians and followed by patients."

The eight appointees join eight sitting members, returning the Task Force to its full complement of 16. Seth J. Corey, MD, MPH, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Cleveland Clinic, takes the chair. Joining him are Patrick K. Hunter, MD, MSc, a pediatrician at Pensacola Pediatrics and assistant clinical professor at Florida State University; Ronald P. Karlsberg, MD, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA; Venkatesh L. Murthy, MD, PhD, a cardiologist at the University of Michigan; Stephen T. Parente, PhD, a health economist at the University of Minnesota and the slate's one non-physician; Goldie Stands-Over-Bull, MD, a family physician at Texas Native Health; Louis J. Wilson, MD, a gastroenterologist at Wichita Falls Gastroenterology Associates; and Dennis W. Wulfeck, MD, MBA, DHA, a diagnostic radiologist at RadPartners MBB Radiology.

The reconstituted panel inherits 18 recommendations in progress. Four await only comment review, a final vote, and publication:

Fourteen remain in draft development:

The research-plan stage, the pipeline's intake, remains empty.

Task Force members are appointed by the HHS secretary through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and serve staggered four-year volunteer terms. The eight came out of a nomination window that ran from April 23 to May 23 under a Federal Register notice anticipating service beginning in June.

Source: HHS (2026 Sep 17) Secretary Kennedy Announces New Appointments to U.S. Preventive Services Task Force