Understanding the Task Force Findings and Recommendations

The Community Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force) uses the terms below to describe its findings.

Recommended

The systematic review of available studies provides strong or sufficient evidence that the intervention is effective.

The categories of "strong" and "sufficient" evidence reflect the Task Force's degree of confidence that an intervention has beneficial effects. They do not directly relate to the expected magnitude of benefits. The categorization is based on several factors, such as study design, number of studies, and consistency of the effect across studies.

Recommended Against

The systematic review of available studies provides strong or sufficient evidence that the intervention is harmful or not effective.

Insufficient Evidence

The available studies do not provide sufficient evidence to determine if the intervention is, or is not, effective. This does NOT mean that the intervention does not work. It means that additional research is needed to determine whether or not the intervention is effective.

Task Force findings may include a rationale statement that explains why they made a recommendation or arrived at other conclusions.