In 1996, UCSF, UC Berkeley and Stanford collaborated to form the Bay Area International Health Interest Group (IHIG). This group meets six times each academic year in faculty homes to discuss a wide variety of IH topics. Meeting venues rotate around the Bay Area, they start with a light dinner to accommodate those coming from a distance, and are attended by faculty, students and practitioners. For the last five years IHIG has also sponsored an annual IH conference, held on a Saturday in the late winter and hosted in turn by the three universities.