While academic public health programs provide meaningful education about public health and seek to assure the understanding of its historical and theoretical foundation, and introduce students to its scientific basis vis-a-vis courses in epidemiology and biostatistics, for example, most are somewhat limited in their abilities to expose students to the ‘‘hands on’’ field of public health practice. Hence, many types of formal and informal organizational and structural relationships between academia and LHDs can be developed to provide such practical experience and expand a LHD’s ability to provide the essential public health services via a better, more educated and experienced public health workforce. The authors propose one such model in the Public Health Exchange described herein. The dynamic benefits that may be attributed to stronger and even more creative means of collaboration seem almost unlimited. For academics seeking to provide the most meaningful public health education and preparation for their students and for LHDs seeking public health workers prepared to ‘‘hit the ground running’’ who already embody the core values of public health, such collaborations should simply appear as common sense. Hence, future work in this area should be directed at examining academia’s experience in partnerships with LHDs, as well as determining the effectiveness of the new, innovative, and effective partnerships in educating the public health workforce and improving the community’s health.