Nineteen senators sent a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday, urging him to stop hindering the work of a key preventive health panel.
The group, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, normally meets three times a year to make recommendations on preventive health services like mammograms and diabetes screenings. Those recommendations have a huge effect on Americans’ access to health care because almost all insurance plans are required to cover services that the panel recommends.
But the committee has not met since March 2025. Mr. Kennedy abruptly canceled meetings last summer and fall, and postponed one scheduled for this month. He also has failed to appoint replacements for several members whose terms expired in December.
“We are particularly troubled by actions that have effectively rendered the Task Force dormant, and brought its life-saving work to a grinding halt,” the senators wrote in the letter, a copy of which was shared with The New York Times. They added, “We are deeply concerned that the work of the Task Force will be irreparably hindered — jeopardizing critical access to new or updated preventive interventions, services, and guidance, and potentially leading to worse health outcomes for the American people.”
The top two Democrats in the Senate — Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the whip — were among the signers. The list also included names across the Democratic caucus’s ideological spectrum, from progressives to moderates, among them Senators Angus King of Maine, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The letter asks Mr. Kennedy to answer several questions, including why the task force’s latest meeting was postponed and how the panel will ensure that future recommendations stay aligned with the best available scientific evidence.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Mr. Kennedy has not replaced the task force’s members, as he did with a C.D.C. vaccine advisory panel, he has made decisions that have prevented it from doing much of its work.
Without meetings last year, the committee struggled to update recommendations or produce new ones. It also didn’t publish a legally mandated annual report to Congress on gaps in scientific evidence, which normally helps guide federal research funding.
Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times.
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