Disease Prevention Guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force

• Preventive health services
• U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
• Practice guidelines
• Evidence-based medicine

This issue marks the first of a series of articles describing the state of the art and science of disease prevention, as interpreted by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). I write to introduce Annals readers to the USPSTF and to describe this journal's role in the guidelines field.

In 1983, Dr. Edward Huth, editor of Annals from 1970 to 1993, published a medical practice guideline on the management of diabetes mellitus (1). It was the product of a new American College of Physicians program, the Clinical Efficacy Assessment Program, which began in 1980 under the direction of Dr. Robert Moser (then the Executive Vice President of the College). The College was one of the first professional organizations to establish a guidelines program. CEAP, as it was known then, set a standard that the best guidelines programs still strive to emulate. The basic approach was to review the literature on a topic, describe the pertinent findings from the very best articles, develop recommendations based on that evidence, and publish the recommendation in Annals. The guideline appeared in a short article, called the position …