This brief summarizes ideas generated at an invitational meeting in October 2000 to explore strategies for bridging gaps among child health researchers, practitioners, and policymakers and to move toward a more efficient, collaborative, child health research system. Following an introduction, the brief is presented in four sections. The first section describes obstacles researchers face in conducting research relevant to current practice or policy, constraints practitioners face in using research findings, and difficulties of policy leaders in accessing and using research. The second section summarizes previous efforts to integrate research with child health practice and policy and presents a vision for the role of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in bridging gaps between research and practice and policy through enhanced infrastructure development, focus on product development, and dissemination of timely research results. The third section delineates issues of priority for both researchers and practitioners due to gaps in current knowledge and to identified unmet needs of children. This section asserts that implementing recommended research priorities requires modifying both structures and processes of practice as well as the academic paradigm. The fourth section notes that many bridges linking child health research, policy, and practice are already present, although underutilized. This section identifies ways to enhance the utility and use of research, and discusses the potential for participatory research models in contributing to the effective use of knowledge. The brief concludes by noting that the meeting participants readily identified salient child health concerns and that some strategies for bridging gaps among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers required few additional resources or infrastructure changes and could reasonably be addressed in the short term. (KB)