14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable
Require HRSA to set women's preventive services mandates by rulemaking
Printed page 484 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“HRSA should be required to repromulgate any women’s preventive services mandates through the notice and comment process that is compliant with the Administrative Procedures Act.”
What has happened
- Not started
Nothing requires HRSA to set the women's preventive services mandates through Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment rulemaking, and HRSA has not repromulgated any of them that way. It updated the Guidelines once in the window - the cervical cancer screening recommendation, proposed for comment on 2025-10-01 and accepted on 2026-01-05 - using a Federal Register notice that the agency describes as 'standard practice' rather than a rule: no proposed rule, no regulatory text, no codification, and the guideline binds plans directly through the ACA. The Departments issued no rule imposing such a requirement, and HHS's active regulatory agenda contains no HRSA rulemaking on the Guidelines - HRSA's three active RINs are the countermeasures injury table, OPTN oversight and a program-policy methodology. HRSA's own Guidelines page, read on 2026-09-03, shows the same practice from the agency's side: it presents the Guidelines as HRSA-supported recommendations developed under the WPSI cooperative agreement and adopted by HRSA, with no regulatory text and no codification anywhere in sight. This is the moved-the-other-way case in its clearest form — HRSA updated a section 2713 coverage mandate inside the window and did it by guideline acceptance announced in a Federal Register *notice*, which is precisely the practice the Quote asks to be replaced with rulemaking.
- HRSA notice: Request for Comments on Draft Recommendations To Update the HRSA-Supported Women's Preventive Services Guidelines Relating to Screening for Cervical Cancer
- HRSA notice: Update to the Women's Preventive Services Guidelines (accepts the WPSI cervical-cancer-screening recommendation after public comment; records that HRSA has funded WPSI cooperative agreements since 2016 and that publishing a Federal Register notice for comment is standard practice)
- HRSA-supported Women's Preventive Services Guidelines — the Guidelines as HRSA-adopted recommendations developed under the WPSI cooperative agreement, with no regulatory text or codification (Date Last Reviewed: December 2025)
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The 2026-01-05 notice was read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-05/html/2025-24235.htm: ‘As is standard practice, HRSA published a Federal Register Notice seeking public comment regarding the proposed updates’, 42 responses received.
- Leveling: a notice with a comment period is not APA rulemaking and imposes no requirement on future HRSA action, which is why this is not started rather than partial. A reviewer who reads the ask as being about the process actually used rather than about a binding requirement could reach a different rung; we note it as a close call.
- reginfo.gov HHS active agenda checked for HRSA (agency code 0906): RINs 0906-AB31, 0906-AB34 and 0906-AB37 only.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- HRSA women's preventive services guidelines
- ID
- 1345