Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced appointments of eight new members on Thursday to a federal task force whose decisions affect health care access for most Americans, after more than a year of stymieing the panel’s work.
The new members’ backgrounds suggest that the Trump administration may be trying to move the United States Preventive Services Task Force, which has historically been scientifically independent, in a direction that serves the administration’s political ideology.
At least two of them have denounced gender-affirming care for transgender teenagers. At least two have criticized Covid vaccines or suggested that fewer people should take them. And several are specialists in one or two medical fields, in contrast to the experts in primary care and prevention who normally serve on the panel.
The appointees were selected through an opaque process during which the Department of Health and Human Services refused to provide access to nomination and application materials, which were supposed to be available to the public.
The task force reviews scientific evidence for tests and medications to prevent conditions like cancer, diabetes and H.I.V., and recommends how they should be used. Those recommendations inform care for hundreds of millions of people, guiding when they get their first mammogram or colonoscopy, and whether they are screened for depression or osteoporosis.
Because most insurers must cover services that the task force endorses, its recommendations also determine what care Americans can afford.
The new members include Dr. Patrick K. Hunter, a pediatrician who has sought to link gender-affirming care to violence and who serves on the Florida Board of Medicine, which approved a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Another new member, Venkatesh L. Murthy, a cardiovascular expert, has also criticized gender-affirming care.
Medical associations including the American Academy of Pediatrics support gender-affirming care for minors.
Dr. Murthy and at least two other new members — Dr. Dennis W. Wulfeck, a diagnostic radiologist, and Dr. Ronald P. Karlsberg, a cardiovascular expert — have also criticized Covid shots or raised concerns about their side effects or effectiveness. Under Mr. Kennedy, the C.D.C. has sought to scale back recommendations for Covid vaccines.
The other new members are Dr. Seth J. Corey, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist, who will be the task force’s chairman; Stephen T. Parente, who was once a health economics adviser to President Trump and is not a medical doctor; Dr. Goldie Stands-Over-Bull, a family medicine physician; and Dr. Louis J. Wilson, a gastroenterology specialist.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ news release about the appointments described the task force as “a volunteer panel of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine” — identical to longstanding language on the task force’s website except for two missing words, “scientifically independent.” Later, in a Fox News opinion piece, Mr. Kennedy said the panel would remain independent.
The task force’s work has been hamstrung since the Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that Mr. Kennedy could unilaterally remove its members and override its decisions. He has prevented it from meeting four times, most recently this July. That has left the task force largely unable to make new recommendations or update old ones.
Mr. Kennedy did not, until Thursday, fill the vacancies left when the terms of a chairman and five other members expired months ago. (New members are typically chosen before their predecessors’ terms expire.) In May, he fired the panel’s two remaining leaders, who historically would have helped the health department evaluate candidates for the task force.
Dr. Alex Krist, a former chair of the task force and a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, said some appointees’ backgrounds criticizing gender-affirming care and vaccines worried him.
“Those political issues shouldn’t be integrated into task force recommendations,” he said. “It should be grounded in the evidence, in the data and in the outcomes.”
Dr. Krist added that he was concerned about the selection of so many specialists.
“Primary care is the field of expertise for prevention,” he said. While there are plenty of guidelines from specialty medical societies, the task force’s recommendations are meant to “have a focus and a philosophy that can be implemented in primary care and that extends to a general population,” he said.
Members of the task force often consult specialists when evaluating specific services. But choosing specialists to serve on the task force itself is “a stark deviation from prior practices,” said Dr. Michael Silverstein, who was the chairman until earlier this year. A family medicine doctor like Dr. Stands-Over-Bull is more in line with the usual profile.
In his opinion piece on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy said he had chosen specialists because preventive medicine “encompasses cancer detection, cardiovascular disease, medical imaging, pediatric care, diagnostic technologies, chronic disease, and other areas where specialized clinical knowledge can sharpen the evaluation of evidence.” He also emphasized that eight members predating the Trump administration remained on the task force.
The selection process to fill the open seats officially began in April, when a Federal Register notice solicited nominations with a May deadline. When Mr. Kennedy postponed the panel’s latest meeting in July, Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the health department, attributed the decision to “an unprecedented number of nominations received for Task Force membership” and said more time was needed to pick new members.
Materials on the nominees were supposed to be public. However, federal health officials did not make them available to The New York Times.
As directed by the Federal Register notice, a Times reporter sought access to the documents in person in June at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the health department branch that oversees the task force. She was turned away by Erica Moshtahedian, the AHRQ chief of staff, who said personal information like addresses and Social Security numbers had not yet been redacted. Ms. Moshtahedian, Ms. Hilliard and other officials have not responded to repeated follow-up emails and calls since then.
The Times filed a lawsuit in August seeking the documents, following Freedom of Information Act requests in June for nomination materials and information on people interviewed for the task force.
Asked about the failure to release the documents, Ms. Hilliard said, “Nearly 3,000 pages of application materials have been under review for public release since June 2026, and we look forward to releasing those materials as quickly as possible, consistent with our FOIA obligations.”
Dr. Aaron Carroll, the president of AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan group that promotes evidence-based health policy and had called on Mr. Kennedy not to interfere with the task force, said that he was glad the task force had a full membership again. But he said that alone wouldn’t necessarily allow it to work efficiently, given cuts to AHRQ, the agency that supports it.
“You can appoint people,” Dr. Carroll said, “but you can’t rebuild the evidence machinery underneath them by press release.”
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