1.1 Purpose
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's (USPSTF's) mission is to improve the health of all Americans by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services and health promotion.
This Procedure Manual documents the methods used by the Task Force to ensure that its recommendations and the reviews on which they are based are of consistently high quality, methodologically sound, scientifically defensible, reproducible, unbiased, and well documented.
The USPSTF is assisted in fulfilling its mission by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which provides scientific, administrative, and dissemination support to the USPSTF, and by AHRQ-designated Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs), which develop the evidence reviews, evidence summaries, and other documents that inform the USPSTF's deliberations. In addition to documenting the USPSTF's methods, this Manual also provides a summary overview of the methods used by AHRQ and EPC staff to support the USPSTF.