The mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is to produce evidence to make healthcare safer, higher quality, and more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure the evidence is understood and used. Primary care is a core component of the United States healthcare system, and a strong primary care foundation is necessary to the health of people and populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the multitude of challenges facing primary care more visible and more severe, including workforce shortages, attrition, and burnout; unsustainable primary care payment, underfunding and underspending; inequitable access, increasing disparities, and lack of affordability; fragmentation and shifting practice organization and ownership; an aging and complex patient population with a high burden of multimorbidity, and the impact of climate change and other natural and manmade events on individual and population health.

In 2021, the NASEM Report, "Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care" emphasized the need for an increased investment in primary care research to build the evidence base underlying quality primary care and inform and transform the delivery of primary care.

Primary care research is critical to AHRQ's mission and vital to ensure a strong primary care foundation. Per the 2021 NASEM Report, AHRQ defines high quality primary care as: The provision of whole-person, integrated, accessible, and equitable healthcare by interprofessional teams who are accountable for addressing the majority of an individual’s health and wellness needs across settings and through sustained relationships with patients, families, and communities. Primary care research is research conducted for the purpose of better understanding or improving primary care; more specifically, it is research that is a) conducted in a primary care setting, b) about primary care patients, clinicians, or teams, or c) on a topic that is integral to, or has direct implications for, the delivery of primary care.

AHRQ funds and disseminates research on primary care systems and innovations, including primary care as the usual source for addressing personal healthcare needs and providing whole person healthcare, the management of commonly occurring and undifferentiated clinical problems, and the continuity and coordination of health services. AHRQ has made significant investments in research to understand how to improve primary care including investing in primary care training and practice-based research networks, integrating behavioral health and primary care, and evaluating the patient-centered medical home and the costs of primary care transformation. Through this NOFO, AHRQ will support innovative research to find actionable solutions to the challenges confronting primary care that can be scaled and spread across the health system.

Purpose:

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to advance the understanding of the role, capacity, and value of primary care to improve patient outcomes and population health by delivering whole healthcare across the life course, and to build evidence about the characteristics and value of primary care that influence patient outcomes and advance health equity, such as care coordination, continuity of care, and comprehensiveness of care, person-centered, whole healthcare, and trust, and how these can be improved and effectively delivered to strengthen primary healthcare. Answering these critical questions is necessary to revitalize primary care in a way that improves individual and population health while increasing access to care, reducing burden on patients and clinicians, and improving equity and quality of care.