As our health care system continues to rebuild from the COVID-19 crisis and confront the ongoing threats of structural racism and inequality, trust has emerged as a vital issue to explore in efforts to improve the nation’s health and well-being.1 The foundation of any successful relationship, trust is key to ensuring positive health care interactions for both patients and clinicians. Building trust, not only between patients and their clinicians and health care system, but also between the public as a whole and the broader health care system, will be crucial to improving health care outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction, and ensuring the well-being of health care professionals. This process will require additional investment, interest, and leadership in the area of trust research to ensure that health systems’ and health professionals’ actions and behaviors to promote trust are evidence based. Through the Building Trust initiative, the ABIM Foundation aims to elevate the importance of trust as an essential organizing principle to guide improvements in health care. As a part of the initiative, the ABIM Foundation and AcademyHealth convened approximately 70 researchers, clinicians, patients, and funders on May 19, 2021, to begin developing a trust research agenda. The meeting focused on understanding the state of trust research and existing gaps in the literature; identifying opportunities for trust research and building a research agenda; and beginning to establish a research community devoted to advancing trust research. The meeting agenda is included in Appendix 2, and the participant list is included in Appendix 3.
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