Primary Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Essential, and Inspiring

Spurred by a novel coronavirus pandemic, 2020 will undoubtedly stand out in the annals of history for radically upending the norms of US politics, economy, culture, and race relations and reminding us of the fragility of life as we know it. The US health care system, which has long struggled with fragmentation and poor return on unmatched per-capita spending, further revealed its shortcomings, among them continuing inattention to primary health care, which the world has long declared should be the “central function and main focus [of a] country’s health system.”1 The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on disadvantaged communities has shone another bright spotlight on the long-standing health and wealth inequities in our nation and the urgent need to address them.