Turning Point National Program Office, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, 6 Nickerson Street, Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
Nearly a billion dollars were made available to state health departments through federal grants in the spring of 2002 for public health emergency preparedness plans. Twenty-one states had already been participating for some years in The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Turning Point Initiative. This article illustrates how earlier practice and experience in developing cross-sector collaborations and institutionalizing a model of broad-based partnerships for public health decision making can increase effectiveness and efficiency in responding to a call for action around an emergency.