September 17, 2026

4 min read

Key takeaways:

  • Eight new members were named to the USPSTF, including Seth J. Corey, MD, MPH, as chair.
  • Medical societies voiced uncertainty about how some members’ ties and expertise may influence guidance development.

On Thursday, HHS announced the appointments of eight new members to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, reshaping the group responsible for developing evidence-based recommendations on preventive services.

“Prevention is one of our most powerful tools for confronting chronic disease. The Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendations influence preventive care across America, and Americans deserve recommendations grounded in rigorous, objective science,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a press release. “We are strengthening the task force to ensure it asks hard questions, follows the evidence wherever it leads and maintains the highest standards of scientific integrity.”



Generic Breaking News infographic

Eight new members were named to the USPSTF, including Seth J. Corey, MD, MPH, as chair. Image: Adobe Stock

The new appointees, who join eight existing members, include:

  • Seth J. Corey, MD, MPH, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Cleveland Clinic who will also serve as USPSTF chair;
  • Patrick K. Hunter, MD, MSc, a pediatrician at Pensacola Pediatrics in Pensacola, Florida, assistant clinical professor at Florida State University and a Florida State Board of Medicine member;
  • Ronald P. Karlsberg, MD, a clinical professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA;
  • Venkatesh L. Murthy, MD, PhD, the Melvyn Rubenfire Professor of Preventive Cardiology at University of Michigan;
  • Stephen T. Parente, PhD, a professor of finance at University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management;
  • Goldie Stands-Over-Bull, MD, lead family medicine physician at Texas Native Health in Dallas Texas;
  • Louis J. Wilson, MD, an internist specializing in gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, and medical director at Digestive Health Research of North Texas; and
  • Dennis W. Wulfeck, MD, MBA, DHA, a diagnostic radiologist and president of practice board at RadPartners MBB Radiology in Jacksonville, Florida.

The appointments follow months of turnover and uncertainty among the task force, which has not met since March 2025 and has not issued guidance since July of 2025.

In May, Kennedy fired task force vice chair Esa M. Davis, MD, MPH, FAAFP, and chair John B. Wong, MD, MACP, after the two were told they had been “inappropriately appointed” to their positions.

Members’ backgrounds raise questions

Corey’s appointment as chair is a departure from USPSTF’s traditional process. Wong previously told Healio that, “historically, all the chairs have already been members of the task force and have completed their 4-year terms as task force members.”

Corey has shown some support for Kennedy online. On his verified X account, Corey called the health secretary’s recent speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, “One of the most honest, accurate speeches in American history.”

In the speech, Kennedy said Democrats “forced citizens to wear masks and to submit to invasive and intrusive medical interventions against their own wills” during the COVID-19 pandemic and “cruelly silenced the voice of tens of thousands of mothers who believe that their children have suffered vaccine injuries.”

Another new member, Hunter, has ties to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and the Catholic Medicine Association — organizations with critical views of gender-affirming care — and he served on the Florida Board of Medicine when it developed restrictions for gender-affirming care in youth. It is unclear whether a USPSTF member’s views of gender-affirming care would impact future recommendations. The USPSTF has not issued recommendations for or against gender-affirming care in the past, but the task force uses a gender-inclusive process when developing guidance. For example, when issuing recommendations, the task force uses gender-neutral language when appropriate and indicates “whether each given recommendation should be applied based on someone’s sex at birth, current anatomy or gender identity,” according to a 2021 USPSTF press release.

Meanwhile, Parente served as a chief economist for health policy during the first Trump administration and, according to reporting from KFF Health News, still consulted “informally with Trump health officials” as of 2025. As a professor of finance, Parente specializes in health economics, insurance and information technology. HHS said he was appointed “for his expertise in evaluating the cost and value of healthcare services,” even though the USPSTF website explicitly states that cost is “not a factor in determining recommendation grades.” He was also appointed for his knowledge in “technologies and their impacts on patients and the delivery of care,” HHS said.

Reactions from medical societies

In a statement, AMA President Willie Underwood, III, MD, MSc, MPH, said the task force’s credible work “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.”

The makeup of the new group, he said, “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. 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,” he said. “This is essential for ensuring that task force recommendations are trusted by clinicians and followed by patients.”

The task force currently has 14 draft recommendations that have yet to be finalized. Among them is a recommendation on chronic kidney disease screening. The American Kidney Fund said in a statement that it is disappointed the new task force does not include an expert in this area.

“Without that expertise, we risk continuing a status quo in which preventive guidance lags behind scientific progress, contributing to delayed diagnosis, missed opportunities for intervention and preventable kidney failure,” the organization said.

Sources/Disclosures

Source:


Press Release

References:

Ask a clinical question and tap into Healio AI’s knowledge base.

  • PubMed, enrolling/recruiting trials, guidelines

  • Clinical Guidance, Healio CME, FDA news

  • Healio’s exclusive daily news coverage of clinical data



Source link