Background: Racial disparities have been shown to persist across many areas of care within the United States, including behavioral health. These disparities were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient-provider racial concordance has been demonstrated to mitigate some healthcare disparities by facilitating better patient-provider communication. There is currently no literature demonstrating if patient provider racial concordance exists for Black patients within the Military Health System nor what impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on mental health diagnoses among active duty service women (ADSW). The purpose of this study was to determine if: 1) mental health diagnosis among Black ADSW was comparable to other ADSW during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a first step toward understanding racial concordance 2) to identify sources of information providing the racial demographics of behavioral health providers across the Armed Forces, identify disparities, and provide recommendations to achieve a more diversified population of those providers. Methods: We took two approaches. 1) A retrospective open cohort study was performed on female active-duty service members in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps from fiscal years 2016 to 2022 using data from the Military Health System Data Repository (MDR). Women with a mental health diagnosis were identified using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) diagnostic codes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis included descriptive statistics on patient demographics, prevalence of mental health disorders, and Poisson Regressions for associations with mental health diagnosis rates pre- and during the pandemic. 2) We conducted an environmental scan of racial and gender demographics of behavioral health providers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Results: A total of 403,431 ADSW were identified and included in analysis; of whom 99,991 (25%) had at least one mental health diagnosis during the study period. Adjustment disorders were the predominant diagnosis for all ADSW with a mental health diagnosis both in the pre- and during pandemic periods. Black ADSW across all ranks were more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis during both periods than White ADSW. The environmental scan revealed behavioral health specialty populations were predominantly White for both the Air Force (67%) and Navy (71% and 67%). The Air Force provided data on both race and gender for behavioral health providers; 52% of its behavioral health provider population is female and 22% female behavioral health providers are Black. The Navy provided data only on the race and gender of a subset of its behavioral health providers and lacked intersectional data. The Army failed to provide any data related to the race or gender of its behavioral health providers. Conclusions: Mental health services utilization was higher among Black ADSW compared to other ADSW during the pandemic. This suggests the presence of stressors that should be assessed and mitigated and Black ADSW are combating the stigma within both the Black American and military communities. This, in combination with improving patient-provider racial concordance, will prove beneficial in producing a healthy, lethal “medically ready” force.