Published in 2020, this 4-page report describes what the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums (NIF) network have learned about "what derails useful communication between leaders and the public and what promotes it."

Perhaps the principal takeaway from the NIF health-care forums over nearly four decades is that when typical Americans deliberate together, they tend to reach judgments that are reasonable, thoughtful, and possibly easier to act on than what emerges from polls and town hall meetings.

The National Issues Forums Institute (https://www.nifi.org/en/hidden-common-ground) will convene a series of Common Ground for Action (CGA) online deliberative forums during upcoming USATODAY reporting on immigration reform and voting. 

On June 13, 2020, the Florida Times-Union published a letter to the editor written by the Rev. R. Gregg Kaufman. In the letter, titled We have a model way to discuss important events in our lives, Kaufman describes what is different and valuable about people using deliberative dialogue as a way to work on problems and making choices, and about some specific deliberative forums projects in the Jacksonville, Florida area.

There is something about deliberative forums that are as old-fashioned and comforting as talking to a neighbor over a backyard fence.  They are blessedly free of Internet trolls and Twitter attacks. No access to Facebook is necessary. Hope may be the biggest intangible asset of these gatherings: The idea, based in the experience and the optimism that forums generate, that most of the problems of the world could be solved if we could just talk and weigh tradeoffs together.