A nurse practitioner, an epidemiologist, an environmental health expert and a health services researcher have all been named to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to serve out four-year terms.

The new members, Linda Ciofu Baumann, Mark H. Ebell, Jessica Herzstein and Douglas K. Owens, replace four outgoing members whose terms are up this year: George Isham, Rosanne Leipzig, Bernadette Melnyk and J. Sanford Schwartz.

USPSTF is an influential body made of a 16-member volunteer panel that scrutinizes the medical literature to provide evidence-based guidelines on preventive health topics.

Here's the background on the new appointees, courtesy of the USPSTF website:

Baumann, a nurse practitioner, is professor emerita at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, and holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Wisconsin. Ebell, who has a background in family medicine, is an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Georgia, and editor-in-chief of the journal Essential Evidence. Herzstein, an environmental health consultant who holds a medical degree from Yale, is the global medical director of Air Products, a chemicals supply company with about 19,000 employees. Owens, who holds a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, is the associate director of the Center for Health Care Evaluation at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, and also directs a research center at Stanford University's medical school.

More Voices