On June 23, 2022, the NJ Departments of Environmental Protection and Health (NJDEP and NJDOH) jointly launched Healthy Community Planning NJ (HCP-NJ).  HCP-NJ is a comprehensive website designed with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, to provide local governments with municipal specific environmental and public health data and benchmarks to inform planning and improve health outcomes. The focus of the website is individualized municipal reports that provide data on multiple demographic, environmental, and public health indicators, with comparison points for the relevant county and state on each indicator. The reports also provide contextual information for each indicator, updates on state and federal actions, and recommendations for individual and local actions to improve indicator values.

Through continued use and review of HCP-NJ, staff and users identified several areas that needed correction or clarification. Note that any changes to various reports, context sheet and summary templates and map books are disseminated to every municipal report and map book collection. Specific underlying data corrections impact data input into the templates. Updates are discussed by topic area, and then in the order in which they appear in the HCP-NJ municipal reports.

Report Introductory Information:

Page 6 of every municipal report is a “Community Data Summary” table (which is also provided to each municipality as a standalone PDF) that summarizes key demographic, environmental, and public health indicator, and county/State benchmarking data in one location. The following data were revised in this table:

1. State and county lung cancer values were revised to address a misplaced decimal point that erroneously increased values by an order of magnitude.
2. The unit for the open space indicator was clarified to indicate it represented population within a quarter mile (equivalent to a 15-minute walk) of open space.
3. The radon indicator values were revised to align with results in the 2015 Radon Tier Assignment Report.

Page 7 of every municipal report is an “About the Town” section expanding on demographics, such as racial and age breakdowns and percent homeownership, that could, combined with the environmental and public health indicator data, better direct impactful local policy and action development to protect public health. In this section, a title in the first table was updated to clarify that the value is all individuals without health insurance (not just those under the age of 65).

Context Page Template Updates:

Every report includes a specific “context page” for key indicators that gives background information about the indicator topic, including information on why it’s an important indicator for overall community health, forms of regulation, testing and/or measurement, and health impacts. The following pages were updated as discussed below:

1. On the “Air Cancer and Noncancer Risks” context page (see page 8 of each report), the term “NATA” (which stood for National Air Toxic Assessment) was replaced with “AirToxScreen”, the new name of that specific data source at USEPA in the map headers at the bottom of the page.
2. On the “Community Drinking Water” context page (see page 12 of each report), if there were no violations for the system, the phrasing was clarified to “No AL, TT, or MCL violation” [emphasis added]. In addition, some minor adjustments were made to the layout so that it was easier to access the hyperlink to the 2019 Annual Compliance Report.
3. On the “Private Wells” context page (see page 14 of each report), the data suppression description was corrected to 10 wells (instead of 5 wells).
4. On the “Surface Water” context page (see page 18 of each report), the data displayed in the maps was modified to reflect a more accurate Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) impairment percentage.
5. On the “Radon” context page (see page 28 of each report), the value for the percentage of homes that tested greater or equal to 4 pCi/L was revised to align with results in the 2015 Radon Tier Assignment Report.
6. On the “Open Space” context page (see page 30 of each report), the units for this indicator were clarified to better explain what was looked at to determine the values.

Map Book Updates:

In addition to a Full Report and stand-alone Summary Report, each municipality also gets a “Map Book” which includes full resolution versions of all the maps generated and embedded into their full report. These versions are designed for the municipalities to use in their planning documents, and education and outreach materials. For this update, the surface water maps within each municipal map book were updated to display the more accurate HUC impairment percentages.  In addition, for those municipalities with significant violations, corrections were made so that the information displayed properly in the map table.

Healthy Community Planning New Jersey (HCP-NJ) was developed by the NJ Departments of Health (NJDOH) and Environmental Protection (NJDEP) staff working in partnership as part of the New Jersey Environmental Public Health Tracking (NJ EPHT) project, with funding in part from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The indicators selected are environmental health issues of concern to NJ communities. The reports do not include all possible environmental health indicators, and do not include indicators for non-environmental health issues.

The process for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and publishing HCP-NJ takes time, which means HCP-NJ data will never be entirely up to date. Where possible, HCP-NJ provides links to online sources which may provide more up to date data.

HCP-NJ is not meant to replace or supersede the use of other federal, state, or local tools or underlying data. Different tools and datasets use different methods and timeframes for collecting data. Using multiple data sets and tools can enhance a community’s overall assessment.

HCP-NJ indicators are aggregate measures which cannot be interpreted as being causally related to any individual’s health outcomes. HCP-NJ indicators do not show disease causation. While some indicators assess known primary risk factors for specific health outcomes (for example, older housing is a proxy for the likelihood of having lead-based paint, which is an established risk factor for elevated blood lead levels in children); other indicators assess one of many risk factors for a health outcome (for example, asthma episodes can be triggered by air pollution but also by tobacco smoke, dust mites, allergens, pets, mold, and wood smoke).  HCP-NJ is designed to serve as a screening tool to provide communities with a starting point to determine which potential areas might need for a closer look or detailed analysis.