The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has released its “14th Annual Report to Congress on High-Priority Evidence Gaps for Clinical Preventive Services.”
In 2024, the USPSTF continued to fulfill its mission of improving the health of people nationwide by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services such as screening tests, counseling about healthy behaviors, and preventive medications. These recommendations help healthcare professionals and their patients make informed healthcare decisions.
In this annual report, the USPSTF reflects on 40 years of improving health through preventive recommendations and calls attention to high-priority research gaps related to promoting health across the lifespan, in all communities. The report reinforces the Task Force’s commitment to improving health equity by highlighting research gaps in underserved populations and high-risk groups.
Read the executive summary below or access the full report here (PDF File, 3.4 MB).
Executive Summary
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF or Task Force) is an independent, volunteer panel of national experts in prevention, primary care, and evidence-based medicine. This year, the USPSTF celebrates 40 years of making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services that can be delivered or referred from primary care to improve the health of people nationwide. The Task Force assesses the strength of the evidence and the balance of benefits and harms of preventive services in people without signs or symptoms. These services include behavioral counseling, screening tests, and preventive medications.
In 2010, the U.S. Congress charged the Task Force with recommending priority gaps in research that deserve further examination. In some cases, clinical preventive services have been well studied, but there are important evidence gaps that prevent the USPSTF from making recommendations for specific populations. The USPSTF recognizes that disparities persist in healthcare and health outcomes based on age, sex, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, geographical location, and social determinants of health, including economic and social conditions. Filling evidence gaps in healthcare and health outcomes for specific populations is a priority. Identifying these gaps to facilitate greater inclusion of populations disproportionately affected by health conditions in research will help the USPSTF issue recommendations that improve the quality of preventive care. In turn, this will reduce health disparities and increase health equity by leading to improved access to and use of these preventive services. This will help all people across the nation get the preventive care that they need throughout their lifespan.
In this 14th Annual Report to Congress, the Task Force calls for more research in high-priority areas from recent recommendations where evidence is lacking in order to improve the health of all people across the lifespan. These issues are especially important to study in underserved populations and high-risk groups.
40 Years of Making Evidence-Based Recommendations
Over the past 40 years, the Task Force has produced close to 300 evidence-based recommendations, helping people of all ages do what matters most: stay healthy and live well for years to come. Task Force recommendations empower patients and their clinicians to make informed choices based on what works and what doesn’t work in preventive care.
In recent years, some of the Task Force’s most impactful recommendations include:
- Lung cancer: New screening recommendations in 2021 that expanded the age range and pack-year eligibility criteria for annual screening, making more people eligible for a life-saving screening
- Anxiety: New screening recommendations for children, adolescents, and adults in 2022 and 2023 that reflected our growing understanding of mental health conditions and the need to identify and care for them
- Breast and colorectal cancer: Updated recommendations in 2024 and 2021 that lower the age to start screening due in part to the increased incidence in younger age groups
- Aspirin use to prevent cardiovascular disease: Updated recommendation in 2022 that highlighted our growing knowledge about potential harms and the need to shift the standard of care accordingly
- PrEP for HIV prevention: Updated recommendation in 2023 that reflected timely data around new forms of pre-exposure prophylaxis to help prevent HIV
- Behavioral counseling interventions for healthy weight and weight gain in pregnancy: New counseling recommendation in 2021 that identified effective behavioral counseling interventions that promote healthy weight gain in pregnancy
Where More Research Is Needed for Health Promotion Across the Lifespan
In this report, the USPSTF calls attention to high-priority research gaps from the past year that, if filled, have the potential to promote health across the lifespan, in all communities. The Task Force has a long-standing commitment to and specific methods for evaluating the evidence for clinical preventive services and making recommendations that promote health and prevent chronic conditions from infancy through adulthood. Although chronic health conditions may affect anyone, some groups of people are at higher risk because of their gender, race, ethnicity, income, geographic location, sex assigned at birth, or other factors. The Task Force hopes to improve health equity by highlighting high-priority evidence gaps across the lifespan, in all communities.
Empowering people through recommendations that cover a variety of preventive services such as screenings, behavioral counseling, and preventive medications can be a way to increase the lifespan for all people nationwide. Preventive services combined with a healthy lifestyle can substantially reduce the risk of diseases, disabilities, and death.
Future research in the following areas is needed to help fill gaps and may result in new recommendations that will help improve the health of people nationwide:
- Prevention of Child Maltreatment: Primary Care Interventions
- Speech and Language Delay and Disorders in Children: Screening
- High Body Mass Index in Children and Adolescents: Interventions
- Oral Health in Children, Adolescents, and Adults: Screening and Preventive Interventions
- Iron Deficiency and Iron Deficiency Anemia During Pregnancy: Screening and Supplementation
- Breast Cancer: Screening
- Falls Prevention in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Interventions
Current as of November 2024.