The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly revealed that the US healthcare system is at a breaking point, and our nation’s goals of a system that ensures access to high quality healthcare for all is falling far short of its potential. We have seen the deep racial and ethnic inequities both within and beyond healthcare as people of color are disproportionately contracting COVID-19, suffering worse outcomes, having less access to diagnostics, vaccinations, treatments, and are dying at higher rates. At the same time, the federal government, states, localities, and health providers are taking dramatic actions to respond to the pandemic and other existing healthcare challenges, and they are being forced to take action without sufficient research and evaluations on the impacts of their decisions.The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) supports research to improve health care quality, reduce costs, advance patient safety, decrease medical errors, and broaden access to essential services. As the lead federal agency for funding health services research (HSR) and primary care research (PCR), AHRQ is the bridge between cures and care, and ensures that Americans get the best health care at the best value. The RAND Corporation released a report in 2020 as called for by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, which identified AHRQ as “the only agency that has statutory authorizations to generate HSR and be the home for federal PCR, and the unique focus of its research portfolio on systems-based outcomes (e.g., making health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable) and approaches to implementing improvement across health care settings and populations in the United States.”#LettersandComments#COVID-19#FederalFunding