The 16 members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are researchers, scientists, and healthcare professionals. I doubt any of them has ever crafted a communications plan or formulated key messages. I would guess few if any have gone through much media training. Their skills lie in other areas.

So where were the PR professionals who should have helped prevent the stumbling, bumbling results of the Task Force’s recommendations on mammograms?

The Preventive Services Task Force is part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Its website lists a press contact as well as an Office of Communications and Knowledge Transfer. Knowledge was transferred all right, but it was cold, calloused and confusing. Shouldn’t someone have helped these people plan their strategy before going public?

Granted the task force should have known better and asked for help. Its members were naive and stupid about the impact their recommendation would have. From their perspective, they’d done a yeoman’s job, spending weeks and months focusing on facts and figures to come up with a surprising result.

Unfortunately, they forgot about the human faces behind those facts and figures.