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Over the course of the past two decades, attrition within the US governmental public health workforce has passed concerning and become dire. The practice sector has struggled to recruit and retain new talent, despite the infusion of considerable federal investment in workforce expansion initiatives. In 2020, Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health partnered with the Georgia Department of Public Health to establish the Rollins Epidemiology Fellowship Program. Initially created to recruit and place early-career master of public health-level epidemiologists into Georgia's public health system for COVID-19 pandemic response, the two-year service-learning program has evolved into an effective and replicable model of direct academic involvement in strengthening the governmental public health workforce. Here we describe the program's structure and early results, spotlighting it for consideration by the federal government and other jurisdictions interested in directly engaging academia in efforts to revitalize the public health workforce.