Senators Probe RFK Jr.’s USPSTF Overhaul

Senators are pushing for answers from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his recent overhaul of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

In a letter, 17 senators led by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) urged Kennedy to “restore the independence and integrity” of the USPSTF, and sought answers to a handful of questions about his recent actions and “how they will inform the future work of USPSTF.”

Chief among their concerns are changes to the types of experts on the task force, how quickly the nomination and candidate review process went by, and a lack of conflict-of-interest disclosures for the new members.

When Kennedy recently appointed eight new members to the task force, he added several specialists — a sharp change from the previous composition of primary care and prevention experts. Appointing five specialists and one non-clinician healthcare economist was “a major break from the historic makeup of USPSTF membership,” the senators wrote.

While specialists have always played a role in task force operations, they’ve mainly served as consultants, “in part to preclude any conflict of interest that specialists may have through prescribing an intervention,” they noted.

The senators also said they were alarmed by a Federal Register notice in April that gave applicants just 1 month to apply for appointments to USPSTF. They called this a “drastic change from a normally year-long process that included a 3-month application window.”

“This rushed process not only calls into question the seriousness of this nominations process, but also whether the members ultimately selected may have been pre-determined,” they wrote.

The senators also raised concerns that the current conflict of interest disclosure page for the task force is “barren and inactive.” They asked whether the new members are still beholden to the “rigorous” conflict-of-interest standards of the past.

Finally, they questioned whether the USPSTF will be able to do its job given major cuts at its parent agency, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), over the past 18 months.

Evidence reviews relied on by the task force are conducted by career staff at AHRQ, but the agency has lost about 80% of that staff. The senators said they have “strong concerns” that the task force won’t be able to develop “evidence-based and credible recommendations without adequate support staff.”

The letter concludes with five key questions for Kennedy and asks for a response by Oct. 15. Those questions include asking for justification for shifting the makeup of the task force away from primary care and prevention experts to specialists, as well as for the expedited nomination and review process — and whether candidates were pre-selected.

Senators also asked about the legal justification for both the firing of the task force’s two vice chairs back in May and for not publishing the new members’ conflict of interest disclosures. They also ask about how AHRQ can support evidence development for the task force given the staff cuts.

The senators also reminded Kennedy that they wrote to him earlier this year regarding their concerns about politicization at USPSTF, but still have not received a response.

Kennedy has significantly re-shaped the USPSTF — which he called “lackadaisical and negligent” at a congressional hearing earlier this year — much the way he overhauled the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy repeatedly cancelled the task force’s meetings, with the last one held in March 2025.

A past chair of the USPSTF recently wrote in a commentary in the Annals of Internal Medicine that AHRQ leadership suppressed the group’s recommendations, including one on cervical cancer and another on cardiovascular disease prevention.