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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shaking up another important scientific panel. It's called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. And the news broke today that he's fired the two primary care doctors who led the panel. NPR's Pien Huang has more.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: The chair and vice chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force received termination letters from Health Secretary Kennedy last week. Both are top experts in primary care and had many months left in their terms. Kennedy said the decision to remove them was administrative and unrelated to their performance or the many years they volunteered to serve on the panel, according to copies of the letter reviewed by NPR. In congressional testimony last month, Kennedy had a harsher assessment of the panel.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: That committee has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years. We're now bringing new members on who have a clear mission. We're going to have much more frequent meetings.
HUANG: The task force hasn't convened in over a year because the Department of Health and Human Services has canceled or postponed their regularly scheduled meetings. Aaron Carroll, head of the nonprofit AcademyHealth, says firing the panel's leadership is problematic.
AARON CARROLL: Real disappointment and concern. We have now eight vacant seats, which is, like, half of them.
HUANG: He says the panel makes recommendations used by hundreds of millions of Americans.
CARROLL: Anyone who gets a screening mammogram, a screening colonoscopy, depression screening, lung cancer screening and more without having to pay anything out of pocket, it's because of the USPSTF.
HUANG: Dr. Alex Krist is a family physician and a former chair of the task force.
ALEX KRIST: Every primary care clinician probably uses the task force recommendations 100-plus times a day. And those recommendations are really critical for defining what doctors are doing or not doing to keep people healthy.
HUANG: The task force is all about evaluating evidence for scientific rigor. Krist sees precedence in Kennedy's remaking of a federal vaccine advisory panel last year, which undermined confidence from some pediatricians and parents in vaccine guidance from the government.
KRIST: And I think that this is going to be a major challenge for clinicians, to know what they should and what they shouldn't do. And I think that this is going to hurt people's health.
HUANG: HHS is looking for new members for the Preventive Services Task Force. They've encouraged a wide array of specialists to apply. In his letter firing the two panel chiefs, Kennedy also invited them to reapply for their old roles.
Pien Huang, NPR News.
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