My fellow AAP members, welcome to my virtual Presidential Address. Who would have imagined just 2 months ago when we were putting the final touches on the 2020 meeting in Chicago and I was starting to plan my address that we would be where we are today. Our personal and professional lives and our institutions have been upended by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with enormous disruption. While I personally experienced the early years of HIV, 9/11 in New York City, and a number of other crises, nothing I have experienced matches the rapid cycle of decision-making and change in the setting of enormous uncertainty. And yet, nothing has given me greater clarity and sense of purpose to the missions that we have all embraced. Our missions of clinical care and community health, research, and education are absolutely essential to getting the nation through this crisis. Our AAP mission statement is quite germane to our challenge—we seek to “inspire the full breadth of physician-led research across all fields of science related to medicine and health, and to build a community of physician scientists in support of the principle that objective science and evidence are essential foundations for improving patient care and the health of Americans”(1). And this is exactly what we must do with both a sense of urgency to focus our efforts on the current challenge but also the imperative to apply lessons learned from this experience to better prepare for the future. So my Presidential Address is more like a call to arms! The faculty, students, trainees, and staff of our institutions have responded in remarkable ways that should inspire us all. Our extraordinary clinicians and health care providers are providing frontline care often under extremely challenging conditions. In some of the hardest hit sites, the academic health systems are playing an essential role in providing care, particularly to some of the most vulnerable members of the community—at the same time educating their communities; developing and sharing a myriad of new policies around testing, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and infection control; and innovating on the fly. We have seen a remarkable pivot to telemedicine, the standing up of drivethrough clinics, and establishment of field hospital and care facilities overnight. I hope I can speak for our Society that we are extremely grateful and in awe of our clinical workforce. And I encourage each of you to advocate for their needs using all of your personal and professional connections and power.

Most of us have seen our laboratory efforts change dramatically as well. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) real-time COVID-19 Response Dashboard indicates that 64% of institutions have shuttered almost all of their on-site laboratories and clinical research with the exception of what is considered essential or critical research (2). There is remarkable innovation utilizing online tools and virtual interactions to keep research moving forward. At the same time, our institutions have pivoted efforts and expertise to research on COVID-19, getting protocols up and running at record pace and disseminating that information also at record pace. This should certainly inform us how to do things differently in the future. And while collaboration and partnerships have always been key components of science, this virus has sparked unprecedented collaboration and sharing information locally and globally leading to an extraordinary cycle of discovery. That