The Research Core for the renewal of the Center to Improve System Performance of Substance Use Disorder Treatment will support the Center in its overall aim to advance the evidence base on delivery system and payment factors that can improve system efficiency and quality of care for individuals with SUD. By pooling expertise at our institutions to develop overarching conceptual papers and quantitative analyses that extend the Component and related projects and are informed by our bidirectional engagement with key stakeholders (through the Policy/Dissemination Core), the Research Core will enable the Center to advance the science of the Component research projects to complementary and new investigations. Thus, the Center will enable a greater impact by those projects than would be attainable through their existing separate funding alone. The aims of the Research Core are to: (1) strengthen the research base by examining overarching questions and conducting analyses; (2) drive the next generation of research through coordinated effort with the Pilot/Mentoring Core; and, (3) through synergistic collaboration with the Policy/Dissemination Core, use input from key stakeholders to develop, translate, and disseminate new research to inform policy and practice. The Core Leads will set priorities and provide leadership for the Research Core activities, which will be organized around four Workgroups: 1) Access to Care, 2) Payment Approaches for Systems Improvement, 3) Quality of Care, and 4) Sustainability. These three aims and Research Core activities are interactive with each other and synergistic within the Research Core, and with the Policy/Dissemination and Pilot/Mentoring Cores. The Research Core will extend the current evidence base by using the Component research projects and related studies as an initial platform from which new overarching themes and research can be generated. This work will enable us to develop new research questions, conduct analyses that extend the science, and refine our existing conceptual frameworks. In addition, translation and dissemination of the activities of the Research Core, supported by the activities of the Policy/Dissemination Core, will enhance the visibility of our work and provide an opportunity for the Center’s research to be informed by real-world constraints, context, and priorities. This will ensure that the Center’s research findings will be relevant to policy makers, practitioners, payers, and other key stakeholders and will anticipate emerging needs for evidence to further efforts to improve the delivery of SUD services in this time of system transformation.