Transforming health care through quality improvement and patient safety initiatives is a national priority. Yet in this field, there is insufficient research, insufficient rigor, and few scientists engaged in studies to demonstrate which initiatives are effective, which are amenable to spread across settings, and which are capable of sustainment. As a relatively new competency in health professional education, the nation's research capacity to study quality improvement falls well behind the need to discover 'what works'and there are few collaboratives and little infrastructure to advance the field. This grant application proposes the Improvement Science Summit as an open-to-all, 1 1/2 day conference to advance methodology, topics, and collaboration in improvement research. Leveraging a close alignment with the momentum created by the nationally-funded Improvement Science Research Network (Stevens, 2009a), this Summit will contribute significantly to national capacity of health care scientists and practice scholars to rigorously evaluate improvement strategies. The Summit program will be planned by the national leaders of the Improvement Science Research Network Steering Council. The conference goal is to move forward the thinking, methods, infrastructure, and national research partnership capacity to conduct rigorous improvement research. Following the conference, materials will be published for wider dissemination through a number of venues. Materials distribution will include streaming video recordings of key presentations, conference proceedings, and manuscripts. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Public Health Relevance Statement Quality improvement and patient safety in healthcare are high priorities held by the federal government, accrediting bodies, regulatory agencies, and patient-advocacy groups;yet insufficient progress has been made in developing the underlying science about how to improve effectiveness and safety in a systems context. The goal of this project is to provide a conference venue in which the nation's healthcare providers and scientists can engage in developing, launch rigorous improvement research studies, and expand capacity to do so, with a target of accelerating interprofessional studies that show us how to make care safe and effective in acute care settings.