'Unclear' if task force behind cancer screening, heart disease recs will meet under Trump
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Dr. Mehmet Oz on the White House campus, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 5, 2026. REUTERS/Al Drago
The task forces working on efforts for several key prevention projects have been stalled under the current leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services. It's been over a year since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force even met.
A group of experts is tasked with meeting to shape recommendations for heart disease prevention, cancer screenings and other preventive services, and NBC News reported that it's unclear if they'll ever meet again. The last meeting was in March 2025.
The volunteer group of 16 doctors, nurses and public health experts was created in 1984 under President Ronald Reagan to review the latest scientific research, edit preventive care standards and deliver recommendations to the American public. They typically meet weekly virtually, but in person three times annually. The Affordable Care Act then mandates that most insurers must cover such services that the taskforce ranks as an A or B grade.
"More than 150 million people with private insurance — including 37 million children — are covered by this provision, according to a 2022 report from the Department of Health and Human Services. The law also extends to roughly 20 million adults enrolled in Medicaid and 61 million adults on Medicare," NBC said, citing the statistics.
The volunteers rotate in and out with new members, so the current panel has five fewer after terms expired at the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, there is a draft on recommendations for cervical cancer screening that is still pending as well as updates to counseling for perinatal depression, former task force chair Dr. Alex Krist told NBC.
They're still meeting virtually most weeks, Krist added. Votes only happen at the larger meetings, however. Usually, they have 20 to 25 recommendations based on new research, but in 2025, they had five. Meanwhile, the panel also reviews its own decisions every five years to determine whether they must be updated as well.
“They’re very much lifesaving recommendations,” Krist said. “For clinicians, the task force is kind of our North Star on what we should do and not do for prevention.”
Dr. Robert Lawrence was the first chair of the task force. When he spoke to NBC, he said that when he led the team, there were concerns about different communities of people who were at higher risk, such as the LGBTQ population facing the HIV/AIDS crisis. Another is that Black women disproportionately face higher rates of maternal mortality than white mothers do. So, there's a concern that any recommendations that single out these groups might be seen by the Trump administration as too "woke."
“Because of RFK Jr.’s anti-science posturing with regard to the vaccine issue and with regard to a lot of other issues in HHS, I believe the same fate befalls the task force,” Lawrence told NBC.
He co-wrote an opinion piece Tuesday addressing the Annals of Internal Medicine. In it, he and the co-authors warn that dismantling the task force would be “an existential threat to clinical practice.”
“I kind of fear going back to the dark ages before there was evidence-based medicine,” he added
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