U.S. Preventive Services Task Force roster adds new cardiologists, radiologist, health economist

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has a new leader and a revised roster to offer clinical guidance on primary care.

On Sept. 17, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announced that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has named eight new members to USPSTF.

“Prevention is one of our most powerful tools for confronting chronic disease,” Kennedy said in the announcement.

“The Preventive Services Task Force's recommendations influence preventive care across America, and Americans deserve recommendations grounded in rigorous, objective science,” he said. “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.”

USPSTF is one of the federal government's most influential but least visible health panels. Its recommendations determine which cancer screenings, counseling services and preventive medications insurers must cover at no cost to patients. The voluntary board has not met for more than a year, but even without meeting, USPSTF has had a leadership dispute that has drawn criticism from physician groups and congressional Democrats.

The new members' four-year terms begin this month, and Seth J. Corey, M.D., M.P.H., has been named the task force's new chair.

AHRQ Director Roger D. Klein, M.D., J.D., also welcomed the new appointees.

“We are excited to welcome these new members to the task force,” Klein said in the announcement. “Each brings valuable expertise and a unique perspective to the task force as it develops recommendations that help people live longer, healthier lives.”

The new members

The eight new task force members, along with their primary roles, are:

• Corey, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Cleveland Clinic and a professor of molecular medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, with 41 years of clinical experience. He is the task force's new chair.
• Patrick K. Hunter, M.D., M.Sc., a pediatrician at Pensacola Pediatrics and assistant clinical professor at Florida State University, with 34 years of experience caring for children and young adults, including in rural communities.
• Ronald P. Karlsberg, M.D., a clinical professor of medicine at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, with 48 years of experience in cardiovascular care.
• Venkatesh L. Murthy, M.D., Ph.D., the Melvyn Rubenfire professor of preventive cardiology at the University of Michigan, with 14 years of experience in cardiovascular care and expertise in medical imaging and artificial intelligence-assisted screening.
• Stephen T. Parente, Ph.D., the Minnesota Insurance Industry Chair of Health Finance at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, with 31 years of experience in health care research and policy.
• Goldie Stands-Over-Bull, M.D., the lead family medicine physician at Texas Native Health, with four years of experience treating Native American patients across rural and urban settings.
• Louis J. Wilson, M.D., an internist specializing in gastroenterology, hepatology and clinical nutrition, and managing partner of Wichita Falls Gastroenterology Associates in Texas, with 29 years of experience.
• Dennis W. Wulfeck, M.D., MBA, D.H.A., a diagnostic radiologist and president of the practice board at RadPartners MBB Radiology, with 33 years of experience in diagnostic imaging.

A task force in turmoil

The appointments follow more than a year of upheaval at USPSTF. The eight new members will join eight members already serving on the task force, according to the HHS announcement. Those returning members are Alicia Fernandez, M.D.; Ericka Gibson, M.D., M.P.H.; Marie (Tonette) Krousel-Wood, M.D., M.S.P.H.; Sei Lee, M.D., M.A.S.; Goutham Rao, M.D., FAHA; Joel Tsevat, M.D., M.P.H.; Sandra Millon Underwood, R.N., Ph.D.; and Sarah Wiehe, M.D., M.P.H., according to the task force's website. The panel, which typically meets three times a year, has not held a formal meeting since 2025, according to Reuters.

Kennedy dismissed two vice chairs, John B. Wong, M.D., MACP, and Esa M. Davis, M.D., M.P.H., in May, and five other members' terms expired in December without being renewed. The panel's previous chair, Michael Silverstein, M.D., M.P.H., had also departed, according to news reports.

Kennedy has said the task force needed an overhaul. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in April, he criticized the panel's pace and promised change.

“Screening for prevention is absolutely critical,” Kennedy told lawmakers. “We are reforming now the USPSTF, which is the committee that decides on new procedures and interventions that need to get CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] compensation. That committee has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years. Now, bringing new members on who have a clear mission, we're going to have much more frequent meetings. We're going to have, for the first time, transparency.”

Composition draws scrutiny

The new roster marks a shift from the panel's traditional makeup of primary care physicians and preventive medicine specialists. AHRQ's spring call for nominations, issued with an unusually compressed one-month deadline, specifically welcomed applications from specialists in fields such as cardiology, gastroenterology, hematology-oncology and radiology, along with health economists. Two of the eight new members, Karlsberg and Murthy, are cardiologists, and the panel also gains a radiologist, a gastroenterologist and a health finance professor.

The shift did not go unnoticed by the American Medical Association. Its president, Willie Underwood III, M.D., M.Sc., M.P.H., said in a statement that the task force's credibility has rested on a membership grounded in primary care.

“The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) plays an important role in helping physicians and patients make evidence-based decisions about preventive care,” he said in the statement. “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.

“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. 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.”

Congress has pushed back

Kennedy's handling of the task force has drawn objections on Capitol Hill for months. In March, 18 U.S. senators led by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) wrote to Kennedy warning that the panel had gone a full year without meeting, the first such gap in at least a decade, and pressing him for a timeline on filling vacant seats and releasing the task force's overdue annual report to Congress.

In May, Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., a pulmonologist, led more than 65 U.S. House members in a letter accusing the administration of trying to politicize the panel's work.

“I refuse to stay silent as RFK Jr. undermines the work of this critical body in apparent service to his baseless ideological aims,” Dexter said in a news release. “Our communities deserve to know they can access the care they need, driven by science they can trust.”

AMA also condemned Kennedy's May decision to remove the two vice chairs. Then-AMA president Bobby Mukkamala, M.D., said in a statement that HHS should “restore the USPSTF's long-standing, transparent process for selecting members, specifically clinicians with expertise in the fields of preventive medicine and primary care.”

Kennedy's authority to remove and replace task force members was unsettled until June 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management that USPSTF members are “inferior officers” whose appointment and removal by the HHS secretary is constitutional, according to KFF. The ruling upheld the ACA's zero-cost-sharing mandate for the panel's top-graded recommendations while affirming the secretary's control over the panel's makeup.

What it means for primary care

For primary care physicians, the task force's grades directly shape which screenings and preventive medications patients receive without cost-sharing. A change in the panel's composition or priorities could affect existing guidance on services ranging from colorectal cancer screening to statin therapy for cardiovascular disease prevention and depression screening, according to Medical Economics' earlier coverage of the overhaul.

The task force's revamp follows a similar, more contentious overhaul of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel that sets vaccine policy, which Kennedy reconstituted last year with new appointees. That move sparked a prolonged public dispute and led some medical groups and states to issue their own vaccine recommendations, independent of federal policy guidance.