About Turning Point

Turning Point, started in 1997, was an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Its mission was to transform and strengthen the public health system in the United States by making it more community-based and collaborative. The initial idea for Turning Point came from the foundations' concerns about the capacity of the public health system to respond to emerging challenges in public health, specifically the system's capacity to work with people from many sectors to improve the health status of all people in a community.

Turning Point was based on the common sense idea that everyone has a stake in public health.

Turning Point's underlying philosophy was that public health agencies and their partners can be strengthened by linking to other sectors (not just the private health care sector, but education, criminal justice, faith communities, business, and others) because the underlying causes of poor health and quality of life are tied closely to social issues that are too complex to be approached by disease models of intervention.

Turning Point created a network of 23 public health partners across the country to:

• Define and assess health, prioritize health issues, and take collective action

• Promote education to decrease the risk of infectious and chronic disease

• Strengthen environmental health services for clean air and water and safe food

• Gain access to health care for everyone

• Improve health status for minority groups

Turning Point brought health-conscious people and organizations to the table to collaborate on improving the public's health.

Local-level Turning Point partners collaborated to:

• Gather data to get a picture of the health status, resources, values and priorities of community members

• Develop consensus about priority health issues in their community

• Mobilize local resources to develop action plans to address health priorities

• Develop consensus about priority health issues using a broad definition of healthy communities

• Communicate local needs, priorities and approaches to elected officials and state agencies to assist in the development of effective health policy

State-level Turning Point partners collaborated to:

• Influence good public health policy

• Expand information technology so data is available to local communities for addressing health concerns

• Stimulate state agencies and organizations to develop comprehensive state health plans

Turning Point also formed five National Excellence Collaboratives that worked to:

• Modernize public health statutes

• Modernize public health statutes

• Create accountable systems to measure performance

• Utilize information technology

• Invest in social marketing

• Develop leadership