The third report of the US Preventive Services Task Force

This article originally appeared in BMJ USA

This month the first four installments in the third US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) report are being published. Unlike the first two reports, published in 1989 and 1996 in single volumes, the third report will appear sequentially and in a variety of formats. Each of the topics reviewed by the Task Force will be available as: 1) a detailed, systematic evidence report published on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ's) web site (www.ahrq.gov/clinic/ uspstfix. htm), 2) a shorter synthesis of the evidence published in a variety of general medicine and family practice journals, and 3) a recommendation and rationale statement (R&R) containing the clinical conclusions derived by the Task Force.

The first four topics reviewed by the Task Force are screening for lipid disorders in adults, chlamydial infection, bacterial vaginosis during pregnancy, and skin cancer. The results are being published in a supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.1 A clinical review of these four areas appears in this issue of BMJ USA (BMJ USA p 187).2

The primary mission of the USPSTF from its inception in 1984 has been to promote effective clinical prevention. Using …