The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report, Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care, specifically recommended a Secretary’s Council on Primary Care as means of coordinating primary care policy and plans. As a collective, we believe that to improve primary care and achieve primary health care will require an effective, ongoing initiative at the senior-most levels of DHHS leadership. DHHS leadership will need to understand the value, promise, and needs of primary care and they will need to be committed to coordinating policy and taking actions designed to strengthen it.

In this past year, the Primary Care Centers Roundtable has prominently articulated the case for establishing a coordinated, federal focus on primary care in publications in leading medical journals and other media.