USPSTF Nominations - Today, Saturday May 23, 2026

I understand that HHS / AHRQ / USPSTF is taking nominations for new board members.  The deadline may be as fast as tonight, Saturday, May 23, 2026.  Please research this for me and report back.

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Claude Opus 4.7

We've seen references to a May 23 deadline. Let me find the active solicitation.

Yes — confirmed. Today is the deadline. Let me also confirm what the portal asks for so I can tell you what you'd need to upload.The page is long but I have the key info confirmed. Let me also grab the Federal Register notice for the formal requirements (CV, statement, etc.).  Here's the answer.

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Yes — today is the deadline. The Federal Register notice (91 FR 21821, Document 2026-07921), published April 23, 2026, requires nominations to be received electronically by May 23, 2026, with appointments to begin in June 2026.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-04-23/pdf/2026-07921.pdf

The nomination portal: https://uspstfnominations.ahrq.gov/register

That is the single channel — there is no email submission, no PDF intake, no Grants.gov route. Everything goes through that AHRQ portal.

The AHRQ instructions page is at https://www.ahrq.gov/cpi/about/otherwebsites/uspstf/nominate.html, and the official Federal Register notice is at     https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/04/23/2026-07921/.

What the portal requires you to submit:

1. Current CV with contact information (mailing address, email).
2. A letter that does three things: 
1. (a) explains how you meet the qualification requirements, 
2. (b) explains how you would contribute to the USPSTF, and 
3. (c) attests to your willingness to serve.

That's the entire initial package. 

[You can get a headstart by using a major AI service, uploading the Fed Reg call for nominations and your CV, and the AI will generate the cover letter.]

Conflict-of-interest disclosure comes later — AHRQ says it will request detailed financial-holdings, consultancies, non-financial scientific interests, and research grants/contracts information only from candidates "under serious consideration."

Qualifications language worth noting:

The notice asks for "expertise in reviewing scientific evidence related to the effectiveness, appropriateness, and cost-effectiveness of clinical preventive services." Specialties explicitly encouraged: anesthesiology/pain management, cardiology, endocrinology, family medicine, gastroenterology, hematology/oncology, internal medicine, OB-GYN, pediatrics, preventive medicine, radiology, and health economics. 

And then this striking sentence — new for this cycle: "applications from physicians in other relevant specialties including but not limited to surgery, laboratory medicine/molecular pathology, and clinical genetics are also desired."

That "laboratory medicine/molecular pathology" inclusion is not in the prior Federal Register notices I just compared (the December 2024 cycle named only "Family Medicine, Pediatrics, Behavioral Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology" as priorities). 

It is a fairly direct fingerprint of Klein's hand on the pen — molecular pathology has never historically been a USPSTF speciality category, and adding it for the first cycle he runs is consistent with the breast-density / colon-screening / new-modality framing he gave Precision Medicine Online.

(For a profile of AHRQ/USPSTF over the past year, here.)

Other procedural notes for you:

• The contact for questions is Beatriz Canas at (301) 427-1629.
• Anyone nominated before April 23, 2026 must be re-nominated — prior nominations from the cancelled January-cycle pool do not carry over.
• The cycle is sharply compressed: roughly a month from publication to deadline, versus the historical March-15 annual deadline that gave nominees 3+ months. Medical Economics flagged this as "a departure from the panel's standard annual nomination cycle."
• Self-nomination is explicitly allowed. Organizations can also nominate.
• Members serve four-year terms, three two-day meetings/year in the DC area, volunteer (travel reimbursement only).

If you're thinking of nominating yourself or someone else, you have until 11:59 PM Eastern tonight as the practical deadline (the Federal Register doesn't specify a time, but federal electronic submissions are virtually always interpreted as end-of-day Eastern on the date listed). 

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I'd submit at least a few hours before midnight in case the portal has any issues — given the staff cuts at AHRQ, technical support if something breaks is essentially nonexistent.