The role of public health is very different today than during its American beginnings in the eighteenth century dispensaries of Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Baltimore.  Paul Starr writes of the early years “that public health in America was to be relegated to a secondary status: less prestigious than clinical medicine, less amply financed and blocked from assuming the high-level functions of coordination and direction that might have developed had it not been banished from medical care” (Starr, 1982).  How much has changed with regard to the status, funding and authority of the public health community?  Our community-academic partnership is addressing issues surrounding the education, financing and role expectation of the public health workforce within our region.