The Commonwealth Fund and AcademyHealth's strategic initiative, Building Bridges: Making a Difference in Long-Term Care provides an opportunity for long-term care stakeholders to exchange information, debate the issues, seek solutions, and identify where additional research is needed.

The initiative seeks to foster development of a network of long-term care researchers, policy leaders, providers, consumer representatives, and funders through a series of annual colloquia and ongoing workgroup discussions among conference participants and others.

The kick-off colloquium was held on Saturday, June 5, 2004 in San Diego, California. It featured an impressive lineup of speakers and focused on two important issues: the use of information and information-based strategies for promoting quality improvement in long-term care, and the challenges of providing long-term care to the dual-eligible population.