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Introduction: papers from the National Institutes of Health State-of-the-Science Conference on Improving End-of-Life Care.

A 1997 Institute of Medicine report cited growing public concern about the quality of care in the U.S. health care system for persons at the end of life. The National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), the lead Institute at the National Institutes of Health for end-of-life research, has conducted a number of public forums to gather information and to assist in identifying research priorities. The complexity of biomedical research requires new methods of discovery, and scientists must use a broad approach and explore new models of team science. In December 2004, NINR and the NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research, along with many co-sponsors, held an interdisciplinary State-of-the-Science Conference on Improving End-of-Life Care. The conference panel identified many gaps in our current state of knowledge and provided suggestions for future research directions. This supplement presents papers from a distinguished group of scientists with a wide range of backgrounds who participated in this state-of-the-science conference.