After her longtime friend died of COVID-19, Abigail Echo-Hawk sat in her chair crying. She wondered if her friend and mentor, a Native American like her, would be counted among the deaths – a worry that only added to her grief. “I couldn’t help this thought that ran through my head: Is his story going to be present in the data? Or did we lose him even there?” she said of the tribal leader in his mid-50s. Echo-Hawk is chief research officer at the Seattle Indian Health Board and a member of the We Must Count Coalition. The group of health equity leaders calls for better health data tracking to shed light on racial disparities because people of color suffer disproportionate rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths as a result of longstanding systemic inequities and racism.