Objectives: This paper discusses the current contexts of the collaboration between public health centers(PHCs) and community partners for health promotion. Then it suggests directions for the development and enhancement of the collaboration. Methods: The discussion in this paper is based on key literature on community health promotion, including literature reviews and case reports. Results: PHCs are mostly engaged in networking and cooperation rather than collaboration with the community. A typical pattern of cooperation is where PHCs provide healthy-setting types of programs to the community in single-partnered relationships. Current cooperation rarely involves co-planning by a multi-partnered partnership, and is greatly influenced by the interest of PHC directors and PHC performance evaluation indicators. Systems change is recommended to foster collaboration for community health promotion. Such change involves: shared understanding of health promotion and collaboration, inclusion of collaboration mechanism in public health governance, leadership development, capacity enhancement of all partners. role definition of PHCs for community collaboration, and development of collaborative system, at the least. Conclusions: At this point where collaboration should be more than rhetoric, multi-faceted, intersectoral, and concurrent approaches are required to create discourses, to develop cases, and to share experience for actual realization of collaboration for community health promotion.