The Municipal Health Council in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo State, conducted discussions on the principles for reshaping interaction between local management of the Unified National Health System (SUS) and institutions of higher learning in order to reorient professional training in health. This local initiative was consistent with national inductive policies such as Promed, Pró-Saúde, and PET-Saúde. The report on the experience in this city revealed the stakeholders' corporatist, political, and economic interests. It further demonstrated that social control and shared management were powerful instruments for consolidating the democratic decision-making levels, highlighting the challenge of regulating and evaluating the impact of this interaction through indicators for health, teaching, research, and user satisfaction.