A Top Aide to RFK Jr. Selected Her Father to Chair an Influential Health Panel

When Malia Shirley joined the Department of Health and Human Services in June 2025 as a White House liaison, she was charged with screening candidates for a critical health care panel that makes preventive care decisions affecting millions of Americans. She picked her dad for the job.

The Trump administration plans to appoint Mark Shirley as chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, NOTUS has learned. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sharply criticized the panel and blocked it from meeting for more than a year.

Officials made the decision last fall to appoint Mark Shirley as a leader of the task force, well before it recently started a formal process to add new members to the panel, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations.

Mark Shirley, who is an osteopathic doctor, works in the emergency department of Memorial Community Hospital and Health System in Blair, Nebraska, according to the hospital’s website.

He formerly served in the Navy and is a colonel in the Nebraska Air National Guard, according to a 2023 article about him published on the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service website.

Mark Shirley also works as a ringside physician for martial arts and professional boxing competitions, describing himself in that article as “an adrenaline junkie.” His Facebook profile features a photo posing with Charlie Kirk, the late founder of conservative group Turning Point USA. Malia Shirley previously worked for Turning Point USA.

Mark and Malia Shirley and HHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

HHS has repeatedly delayed plans to announce Shirley’s appointment but intends to announce it ahead of a planned late summer meeting of the task force, the sources said. The task force typically meets three times a year — in March, July and November — but hasn’t convened since March 2025.

It’s one of two expert-led U.S. advisory panels Kennedy has worked on overhauling. Last year he replaced all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — which reviews the science on vaccines and makes recommendations — with his own handpicked members.

The preventive services panel issues recommendations that insurance companies use to determine which services should be covered without a co-pay, such as mammograms or colonoscopies. It’s currently half its typical size after some members’ terms expired and they weren’t replaced.

The administration plans to install a dozen or more additional members, bringing total membership to more than its typical 16 people, the sources said. It solicited nominations for open positions last month.

The panel is currently without any chairs. Kennedy dismissed two of them last month and a third naturally rolled off at the end of his term. Shirley’s appointment as chair would be unusual because chairs are typically selected among members already serving on the panel.

Members typically serve four-year terms and are selected by the head of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, in consultation with the panel’s leaders. The current head of AHRQ is Roger Klein, who is a molecular pathologist and attorney.