Book excerpt: Health Extension: Community-Based Healthcare and the Future of Cooperative Extension explores innovation in extension health programs, engaged scholarship promoting research-based information in communities, and the evaluation and documentation of community programs and their impacts. This volume provides land-grant and university-based colleagues up-to-date information on using the Cooperative Extension System (CES) for community engagement in healthcare while also familiarizing those outside CES and the academy with a roadmap for improvement. The contributions of a diverse array of scholars challenge the status quo in extension programs by characterizing the introspection, understanding, creativity, partnerships, and leadership that will be required to improve lives and communities in the twenty-first century. This perspective underscores the role of CES as foundational to the future of Health Extension and offers an alternative to approaches that utilize the CES as a model without the accompanying advantages of history, community embeddedness, and sustainability.