Local governments in New Jersey have broad authorities to advance efforts that address local conditions that may affect health.  “Social determinants of health are the conditions and environments where people are live which affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life, outcomes and risks.  Social determinants of health can be grouped into five domains:

• economic stability,
• education access and quality,
• health care access and quality,
• social and community context, and
• neighborhood and built environment.”

Environmental and neighborhood conditions directly affect health status and play a major role in quality of life, years of healthy life lived, and health disparities. Safe air, land, and water are fundamental to a healthy community environment as is access to nutritious food, outdoor spaces to recreate, and an environment free of hazards.

Examples of roles and responsibilities of municipal governments in New Jersey that can contribute to efforts to promote and improve environmental health include:

• Municipal governance pursuant to the New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law (N.J.S.A. 40:55D-1) which grants towns the authority to adopt a master plan that sets land use priorities and to enact zoning ordinances that dictate where and in what form development should happen, all with the purpose of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of residents.
• Establishment of an Environmental Commission (N.J.S.A. 40:56A-1) which are authorized to advise local governing bodies on environmental issues, research local environmental issues to support local governance, inform local governing bodies’ decisions on proposals for development, develop and maintain an inventory of environmental resources and environmentally sensitive assets, educate and inform residents, among other responsibilities.
• Minimum practice standards and capabilities of a municipal Board of Health which is responsible for ensuring the delivery of specific requirements as outlined in New Jersey Department of Health rules (N.J.A.C. 8:52). Increasingly, the practice of local public health nationally is evolving to a framework of Public Health 3.0 in which public health officials work collaboratively with community partners and local officials in other sectors to advance collective impact focused on social determinants of health.
• Voluntary participation in Sustainable Jersey^TM which is a nonprofit organization that establishes voluntary actions for adoption by municipalities to promote local sustainability. Managed by municipal level Green teams with participation in 458 of New Jersey’s 565 municipalities, Sustainable Jersey outlines discrete actions for municipalities to voluntarily take in order to gain points.  With regard to environmental health, Sustainable Jersey currently has actions in categories including Brownfields redevelopment, waste management, Green Design, Land Use and Transportation and Sustainability and Climate Planning.

Focus groups conducted by the New Jersey Departments of Environmental Protection and Health with local planners, health officials and environmental commissioners in support of New Jersey’s participation in the National Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program, point to the strong commitment of local officials to use their authorities, roles and responsibilities to address environmental conditions in their communities that may affect health.  Local officials indicated a need for technical assistance and easy access to local environmental and health data to support their efforts to address environmental conditions that may affect health.

Through its participation in the national EPHT, New Jersey DEP and DOH are assembling municipal-level data pertaining to environmental health that can assist local governments, including health, planning and environmental agencies and “Green Teams,” with integrating consideration of environmental health more systematically into planning healthy communities. Across the United States as well as in New Jersey, there are replicable examples of how local health, planning and environmental agencies are using EPHT and other environmental health data to plan for environmentally healthy communities.