Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may soon dismiss the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an advisory panel of primary care experts, raising “deep concern” from the American Medical Association and other top medical groups.
The plan was first reported in The Wall Street Journal. “It’s very concerning — and it’s not the first time we’ve been concerned,” says Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the AMA. NPR has not independently confirmed the plan.
Last month, Kennedy dismissed the members of a different advisory committee — one on vaccines for the CDC — and replaced them with his own picks, who largely lacked the expertise in vaccines, immunology and patient care the members typically have.
Mukkamala worries the same could happen now with the USPSTF. The independent group of experts focuses on primary care, and is convened by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, under the Department of Health and Human Services, which is overseen by Kennedy.
“When you have something good and you don’t know if it’s going to be replaced with something good, it’s just a risk that nobody should take,” Mukkamala says.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The USPSTF has been reviewing data and making recommendations for preventing all sorts of diseases since 1984.
“Probably every patient I see, I’m using about five to 20 of their guidelines to make sure that I’m keeping that person healthy,” says Dr. Alexander Krist, a family physician at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a former chair of the task force. For example, those guidelines are used for mammograms for breast cancer screening, colonoscopies for colon cancer, or managing high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, depression or anxiety, he says.