• Jennifer E DeVoe, Sonja M Likumahuwa-Ackman, Heather E Angier, Nathalie Huguet, Deborah J Cohen, Susan A Flocke, Miguel Marino, and Rachel Gold.
• From the Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR (JED, SLA, HEA, NH, DJC, SAF, MM); OCHIN, Inc., Portland, OR (JED, RG); Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research, Portland, OR (RG).
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2020 Sep 1; 33 (5): 774-778.

BackgroundPrimary care practice-based research networks (PBRNs) are critical laboratories for generating evidence from real-world settings, including studying natural experiments. Primary care's response to the novel coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic is arguably the most impactful natural experiment in our lifetime. EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19: We briefly describe the OCHIN PBRN of community health centers (CHCs), its partnership with implementation scientists, and how we are leveraging this infrastructure and expertise to create a rapid research response evaluating how CHCs across the country responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 RESEARCH ROADMAP: Our research agenda focuses on asking: How has care delivery in CHCs changed due to COVID-19? What impact has COVID-19 had on the delivery of preventive services in CHCs? Which PBRN services (e.g., data surveillance, training, evidence synthesis) are most impactful to real-world practices? What decision-making strategies were used in the PBRN and its practices to make real-time changes in response to the pandemic? What critical factors in successfully and sustainably transforming primary care are illuminated by pandemic-driven changes?Discussion And ConclusionsPBRNs enable real-world evaluation of practice change and natural experiments, and thus are ideal laboratories for implementation science research. We present a real-time example of how a PBRN Implementation Laboratory activated a response to study a historic natural experiment, to help other PBRNs charting a course through this pandemic.© Copyright 2020 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

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