As we approached the second quarterly issue of Transformations in Public Health and the second quarter of working with the Turning Point partnerships, it occurred to us that we ought to share with you how our own partnership efforts at the National Program Offices are evolving. Just as the Turning Point grantees are developing partnerships at the state and local levels, we are developing some important partnerships at the national level with the goal of enhancing our capacity to support the collaborative efforts of those coalitions funded under this initiative.

Not surprisingly, we continue to learn our own lessons about the ingredients required to nurture meaningful and effective partnerships. As you might expect, effective communication ranks among the top ingredients. To this end, we thought it might be particularly useful for us to articulate the respective roles of our partnering organizations.

The Role of the National Turning Point Partners

Turning Point began as a partnership between The Robert Wood Johnson and W.K. Kellogg Foundations. Their early collaboration on the vision of Turning Point assured that this initiative would bring to the process of transforming the public health system the most progressive thinking on the subjects of systems change, partnership and coalition building, and strategic planning related to sharing responsibility for protecting the public's health. Moreover, their intent is to create a malleable but targeted program shell that will enable innovative partnerships to develop unrestricted visions of what is possible to accomplish if provided a "safer space" to create the public health system of the future. The program structure needs to be flexible to ensure an appropriate alignment with the nuances, realities, and goals of disparate state and local constituents but also requires adequate structure to stay focused on systems-level transformation. Thus, the collective role of the two foundations is to serve as a catalyst for such transformation by providing resources geared toward strengthening - in the most creative ways possible - the public health infrastructure in the United States.

The age-old cliché that purports money cannot buy happiness - not to mention quality of life - also applies to the formidable task of transforming the public health system. Thus, the financial resources dedicated to Turning Point are ostensibly inert elements without the existence of an effective venue for change. In keeping with the true spirit of innovative collaboration, the foundations established two National Program Offices to carry out the mission of the Turning Point program. The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and The University of Washington School of Public Health & Community Medicine (UW) - two national public health organizations - serve in this capacity. Ultimately, through a collaborative and experiential process, the partnerships funded under Turning Point will devise and implement plans to transform the public health infrastructure. Our role at the National Program Offices is to facilitate this process by harnessing the resources provided by the foundations to establish a nationwide learning community. In this way, we conceptualize Turning Point as a national laboratory of coalitions grounded in innovation and dedicated to charting a course of action that best fits their respective locales. To this end, resolved to avoid a prescriptive approach, the National Program Offices are available to assist the Turning Point coalitions through consultation, de velopment and distribution of state-of-the art tools and literature, development of national forums and learning opportunities, and creating expertise linkages among partners.

New Partners Are Added

In the last several months we have added two new national partners, The Lewin Group, Inc., and the Information Access Project. With support from The Robert Wood Johnson and W. K. Kellogg Foundations, The Lewin Group is working with state and community partnerships together with both National Program Offices to evaluate the Turning Point initiative. The Lewin team is working directly with the Turning Point grantees to capture through observation, interviews, and dialogue the evolution of their partnering efforts and the multiple dimensions of change associated with their progress. They are focusing on the impact of the overall program and will not be evaluating the success of individual partnership efforts. While the Lewin team will not provide technical assistance related to public health issues to Turning Point grantees, they will refer requests for assistance or other program-related inquiries to staff at the National Program Offices.

Our newest national partner, the Information Access Project, will be assisting the Turning Point sites with the development of information infrastructure. Comprised of staff from The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, this team of information technology professionals is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to develop specific communication strategies and tools designed to enhance the Turning Point partnerships' capacity to communicate and share useful information. Special projects include the development of an electronic Turning Point network, or (Intra)net, and to provide Turning Point grantees with listserve and other communications capacities. Like the Lewin team, the InformationAccess group will work closely with National Progam Office staff.

These national partners and their subsequent technical assistance capacities are garnered to promote the success of the participating Turning Point coalitions. Our future plans include creating strategic linkages with many of our federal partners.

Looking Forward

As the two National Program Offices continue the work of building our own partnerships, we are reminded continually of the challenging nature of collaborative work and how vital effective communication is to its success. We are very pleased with our team at the national level and strongly believe that, as our partnership evolves, our ability to support the 14 statewide and 41 local partnerships will evolve as well.

In closing, we are confident that our work ahead will prove challenging and productive and we welcome your input as to how we might enhance our national partnership. The arduous nature of collaboration is clearly worth the effort. We believe the Turning Point program is an unparalleled illustration that supports yet another adage; i.e., the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.