Cervical cancer, depression screening among 14 stalled topics
The Trump administration has postponed or canceled all meetings of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force since March 2025, according to a report by The Guardian, effectively preventing the panel from issuing binding recommendations for more than a year. The task force, created under the Reagan administration and tied to insurance coverage for preventive services under the Affordable Care Act, had 14 topics under consideration that have been stalled, including cervical cancer screening, perinatal depression, and autism screening.
Dr. Michael Silverstein, who served on the task force from 2016 until he rotated off in March 2025, told The Guardian that the panel had been reviewing updated evidence on childhood tobacco cessation. “There was a lot of new, very encouraging evidence on tobacco cessation for kids,” Silverstein said. “We’re talking about children and tobacco – I can’t imagine there’s anything controversial about that.”
The task force last considered childhood tobacco cessation in 2020, when it issued formal recommendations for preventing children from taking up smoking but found insufficient research to recommend cessation programs. The topic was revisited in 2025 with the aim of publishing an updated recommendation. Silverstein said the issue moved through subcommittees even as the broader group was prevented from meeting, but a draft recommendation was never reached.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the task force’s two chairs, Dr. John Wong and Dr. Esa Davis, in May, as MSI previously reported. At a congressional hearing in April, Kennedy called the task force members “lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years.” The changes follow a 2025 Supreme Court ruling that clarified Kennedy’s authority to appoint and fire members of the panel.
The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that a July task force meeting had been postponed until late August to allow additional time for selecting and onboarding new members. “Due to an unprecedented number of nominations received for Task Force membership, the forecasted July USPSTF meeting has been postponed until late August,” said Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary for HHS.
Beyond the task force, the administration has ended several anti-smoking health programs across the government. The CDC’s office on smoking and health has been shut down for more than a year, and a 14-year-old ad campaign called “Tips from Former Smokers” went off the air last year. The Food and Drug Administration’s lead tobacco regulator was removed in April 2025.
Dr. Marty Makary, a former Trump FDA commissioner, resigned in protest of a new FDA policy allowing the sale of flavored vapes by tobacco companies, according to The Guardian. The policy decision came shortly after a Reynolds American subsidiary donated $5 million to a Trump-backed super PAC, the New York Times reported.
Silverstein said the delays have also affected recommendations on perinatal depression and cervical cancer screening, issues with “very, very important public health implications.”
Outside groups have expressed frustration with the lack of transparency. “Republican and Democratic administrations, including the previous Trump administration, were not like this,” said Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, president and CEO of the nonpartisan health services research group AcademyHealth. “The fact we can’t get answers to the most basic of questions after a full year is staggering.”
In the absence of clear direction from Kennedy, some test and device makers have begun lobbying the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, which supports the task force, according to Politico. Guardant Health, which makes a blood test for colorectal cancer, spent $241,000 in the first three months of 2026 lobbying AHRQ and launched a public petition urging Kennedy to update colon cancer screening guidelines.
“It’s somewhat humorous, but also sad, that we have to keep guessing what is going on in our government instead of actually knowing,” Carroll said.