The goals of each Town Hall Meeting are to enlighten, empower, and encourage activism among caregivers and their families. We also seek to alert them to services, providers, benefits, and policies available to them in their communities.

Caregiving consumers need to know how to navigate their healthcare universe. Our nation now has more parents to care for than children. Caregiving affects each one of us. Forty years after the signing of the Older Americans Act at the beginning of the Vietnam War, caregivers and their families are still looking for answers. Across our country, family caregivers and their communities are coming together to share solutions, and to change the way we care for our parents, spouses and friends.

In each Town Hall Meeting, a Moderator seeks answers and provokes solutions from a group of diverse experts and caregivers. The panelists are surrounded by an audience of 100-150 people, capable of adding their responses to the content. The two-plus-hour ad-lib discussions are videotaped, then edited to 60-90 minutes, and distributed to the regional public through local PBS stations. These events are supported by aftermarket outreach activities that will extend the life of the event.

Each PBS Town Hall Meeting contains a short "historical root": the reason why we are holding one in that particular city. In Kansas City, it was because Harry Truman had first called for a universal health care policy while president; in Denver, because it is the Baby Boomer capitol of America; in Milwaukee, because a senior rally in 1977 called for their state legislature to honor their elders with programs.

Three more Town Hall Meetings are scheduled for 2007 as we continue to look at the role the federal government will play in the lives of American families and their elders in the 21st century.