Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has called for improved Alzheimer's screening, but a critical federal panel that could help researchers develop practical screening methods has been blocked from meeting for more than a year. The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had planned to issue a recommendation on cognitive decline screening this year, alongside 13 other topics including autism screening and food allergy prevention.
Evidence for screening is mixed
“The evidence for cognitive screening for dementia is not great,” said John Ruiz, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Arizona and a recent panel member. The taskforce, composed of expert volunteers who assess preventive services for insurance coverage, has not met since March 2025 due to Trump administration actions. A political appointee fired two panel chairs, and the administration has not appointed new members. Ruiz rotated off the taskforce in January.
“You get 10 neurologists, you get 10 approaches on how they’re going to assess that – there’s no consensus. The evidence is mixed at best,” Ruiz said. “The taskforce’s response has been to say, ‘Put more funding into building the evidence, allow researchers to do screening studies to find out – what does the evidence say about screening tools?’”
Kennedy's contradictory stance
In April, Kennedy criticized the panel while calling for better screening. “Screening for prevention is absolutely critical,” he told Congress, responding to Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida. “We are forming now the USPSTF, which is the committee that decides on new procedures and interventions that need to get [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid] compensation. And that committee has been lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years,” Kennedy said, adding that the NIH is making investments for better Alzheimer's screening.
At the time, the health department had prevented the USPSTF from meeting for over a year and failed to fill at least eight vacancies (the panel usually has 16 members). A month later, Dr Roger Klein, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, fired two taskforce chairs.
Impact on research
The USPSTF recommendations can inform future research, as draft recommendations are open for public comment and receive substantial input from research communities. Alzheimer's researchers report their work has been “slowed” by health department policies, including funding disruptions. An estimated 7.4 million Americans 65 and older live with Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia. About 200,000 middle-aged Americans are also diagnosed, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
Alzheimer's screening typically relies on symptom appearance, followed by cognitive testing and referral to a neurologist. There is no major treatment, making reliable screening urgent for lifestyle changes to delay cognitive decline.
Blood biomarker tests
“There’s not like where you might go get a mammogram for breast cancer screening – there’s nothing like that set up for Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive impairment,” said Allison Aiello, a professor at Columbia University, whose studies seek biomarkers and cognitive tests for early detection. Kennedy told a House subcommittee in April: “It’s almost regulatory malpractice that we do not have early screening already.” He did not specify a test, but some researchers believe he refers to a new blood biomarker test for P-Tau217, approved in May last year for people over 50 with symptoms – not screening.
“I disagree with [Kennedy’s] assertion we should be rolling those out broadly,” said Ann D Cohen, co-director of the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. “They have very good diagnostic – not prognostic – value.” One study suggested the tests could produce many false-positive results in real-world settings.
Funding freezes slow science
Cohen’s work advancing screening tools was affected by Trump administration policies. The Guardian reported in March 2025 that 14 of the US’s 35 Alzheimer's disease research centers were impacted by funding freezes, making it hard to retain staff and clinical trial patients. Cohen’s funding did not clear until “the end of last summer,” forcing her to use “several hundred thousand dollars” in philanthropic funds intended for blood biomarker tests. “We had to cancel that because we had to use those funds to keep our clinic open,” Cohen said. “There’s no way around the fact that science has been slowed down.”
Aiello distinguished between test emergence and broad rollout, questions typically considered by the USPSTF. “Should we be doing that at every primary care visit? That’s a whole other question – and that’d be something you’d have to talk to a policy person about,” she said.
