Whopper of the Week: RFK Jr. Silences Preventive Health Experts and Harms Primary Care

Whopper of the Week: 

RFK JR. SILENCES PREVENTIVE HEALTH EXPERTS AND HARMS PRIMARY CARE

The US Preventive Services Task Force has been "lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years. We’re bringing new members on who have a clear mission. We’re going to have for the first time transparency.” 

-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., April 16, 2026

SUMMARY

During his Congressional testimony in April, Secretary of Health Kennedy made an unsubstantiated, slanderous claim against the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The USPSTF is a voluntary panel of scientifically independent national experts in clinical prevention and evidence-based medicine. Founded in 1984, the USPSTF has issued recommendations for average risk, asymptomatic individuals on 90 different prevention-related topics for screening, behavioral counseling, and preventive medications. The USPSTF recommendations shape the content and priorities of primary care. Their recommendations are considered so well-founded and important that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) currently requires insurance plans to cover 54 USPSTF recommendations – from vision screening in children to intimate partner violence for women of childbearing age to breast, cervical, and colon cancer screening in adults – with no out-of-pocket costs.

Kennedy has consistently attacked and undermined the USPSTF. He has barred the USPSTF from meeting for more than a year, fired its leadership, not replaced members whose terms ended, diminished administrative support for the USPSTF, maligned its performance to Congress, and ignored the deadline for the annual report to Congress – all without explanation. In spite of his own actions, Kennedy has the temerity to charge the Task Force with negligence. 
 

WHY IS THIS A WHOPPER?

The USPSTF is not “lackadaisical.” Its 2024 annual report explains the USPSTF’s mission and documents the volume and breadth of its activities during the final year of the Biden administration. The USPSTF issued 8 draft research plans (for public comment), 9 final research plans, 6 draft recommendations (for public comment), and 8 final recommendations spanning 21 topic areas.

The USPSTF’s activities are also very transparent, with detailed procedures designed to minimize and manage conflicts of interest, encourage relevant, diverse professional backgrounds and skills, promote public and professional input, and support a rigorous approach to analysis of evidence and communication of recommendations.  

Kennedy has had USPSTF in his cross hairs since the spring of 2025. The 16-member task force normally has three annual meetings in March, July, and November, but during the second Trump administration it has met only once, in March 2025. In July 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy planned to dismiss the USPSTF members. In response, the American Medical Association and five major medical professional societies representing 400,000 physicians and medical students issued statements defending the USPSTF. Instead, Secretary Kennedy opted to cancel USPSTF meetings. In August 2025, Defend Public Health members Miranda Yaver and Elizabeth Jacobs raised the alarm about dismantling the USPSTF, outlining how it is part of a larger Trump administration strategy to undermine the ACA through backdoor channels.

One year later, in March 2026, 19 Senators wrote to Kennedy to express concern about “actions that have effectively rendered the Task Force dormant.” Ignoring the Senators' call to revive the USPSTF, Kennedy fired the two Vice Chairs, leaving six positions vacant including all of USPSTF’s leadership positions.  

Should the USPSTF ever reconvene, Trump administration budget cuts will impede the Task Force’s capacity to make recommendations. The Agency for Health Research Quality provides administrative support to the USPSTF and has lost nearly 80% of its staff under Secretary Kennedy. 

Kennedy’s hostile actions toward  the USPSTF parallels his takeover of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), and represents yet another example of his intolerance of independent scientific expertise. It remains to be seen if  Kennedy will let the USPSTF dissolve by inaction or by staffing the Task Force with loyalists who dilute the trustworthiness of USPSTF process and recommendations.
 

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

When Secretary Kennedy puts the USPSTF in limbo, he triggers a cascade of harms. The USPSTF's syntheses of research and their clinical recommendations are delayed, which affects the content and quality of primary care and what care is without out-of-pocket costs for patients. The delays also affect research focused on prevention. The USPSTF identifies knowledge-gaps in preventive interventions in order to promote high impact clinical research and improve preventive care more quickly.

In a February 2026 editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Task Force’s first chair, Robert Lawrence, and first science advisor, Steven Woolf, describe why they believe the current threat to the Task Force matters. They conclude:

“Trustworthy, objective assessment of scientific evidence and responsible policy guidance, grounded in data, are essential. These cherished resources are now in jeopardy. It took decades of hard work to build the reputation of advisory bodies, enhance analytic methods for the critical appraisal of evidence, and refine processes for producing evidence-based recommendations. Current efforts to toss this progress aside in pursuit of political or ideological aims are destroying the infrastructure that took decades to build. It is an existential threat to clinical practice and population health that we ignore at our peril.”

Contributions by: David Goldberg, M.D., Elizabeth Jacobs, Ph.D., Aurora Horstkamp, M.D., Benedicte Callan, Ph.D.