Kennedy Stacks the US Preventive Services Task Force With Eight New Members After a Year of Cancelled Meetings
On September 17, 2026, HHS announced eight new members appointed to the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) — the volunteer panel whose recommendations (cancer screenings, HIV PrEP, and other preventive services) determine what health insurers are required to cover. The appointees — including a pediatric hematologist-oncologist (Seth Corey, Cleveland Clinic), a Pensacola pediatrician (Patrick Hunter), two preventive cardiologists (Ronald Karlsberg, Cedars-Sinai; Venkatesh Murthy, Michigan), a health-economics professor (Stephen Parente, Minnesota), a family physician at Texas Native Health (Goldie Stands-Over-Bull), a Texas internist (Louis Wilson), and a Florida diagnostic radiologist (Dennis Wulfeck) — join the eight current members. (CIDRAP)
The context is what makes this consequential: the USPSTF hasn't met in more than a year, with several scheduled meetings canceled by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has criticized the panel and been seeking to remake it. Kennedy, in the HHS news release: "The Preventive Services Task Force's recommendations influence preventive care across America, and Americans deserve recommendations grounded in rigorous, objective science."
The American Medical Association flagged the composition shift: the new members, many of whom are specialists rather than primary care clinicians, "represent a significant departure from the Task Force's traditional membership," said AMA President Willie Underwood III, adding "We believe maintaining a strong primary care voice must remain central to its work." (CIDRAP)
Why it matters: Because USPSTF grades drive mandatory insurance coverage of preventive care under federal law, remaking the panel's membership after a year of dormancy is a lever with immediate coverage implications — and it lands the same week Kennedy addressed the Children's Health Defense conference (see Measles: CDC Sends a "Disease Detective" and Nearly $4M to Pennsylvania — and Has Quietly Shifted Death Counting to NCHS Mortality Data), deepening the picture of an HHS simultaneously skeptical of vaccine safety and rebuilding the preventive-care machinery.