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.