By: Jasmine White, Follow South Jersey Community Journalist
SOUTH JERSEY – The New Jersey’s One Health Task Force (OHTF) and the New Jersey Department of Agriculture approved its first strategic plan during its quarterly meeting on May 23, 2025. The OHTF expressed that it is looking forward to working toward improving the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, as several Strategic Plan objectives are actively underway.
“Protecting the public’s health requires understanding and responding to diseases and other health threats that spread between people and animals. It also requires recognizing how these challenges impact our globally connected environment,” said New Jersey Department of Health Acting Commissioner Jeff Brown in a Department of Health press release. “This strategic plan puts New Jersey at the vanguard of science and public health, providing a roadmap for building the infrastructure that will undergird this complex and essential work.”
OHTF’s Strategic Plan consists of the following six goals all intended to be completed short-term (1 year) and long-term (3 to 5 year) objectives:
1. Strengthening One Health Coordination and Collaboration,
2. Stimulating Interdisciplinary Health Research and Innovation,
3. Developing a One Health Cognizant Workforce,
4. Increasing Public Awareness of the Importance of One Health,
5. Improving Data Accessibility Across Sectors and Disciplines and
6. Ensuring Sustainability or the One Health Approach in New Jersey.
The Task Force’s Strategic Planning Committee will consistently revisit and reassess the progress that each of the goals have made to revise it if needed.
According to the Department of Health press release, New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Ed Wengryn said, “‘Agriculture sits at the crossroads of human, animal, and environmental health.From food safety to animal disease to soil and water quality, each challenge we face is deeply interconnected. By addressing them holistically, we can ensure the resilience of our agricultural systems.’”
The NJDA announced the launch of a new tool to clear the way for collaboration in New Jersey known as OneHealthConnect listserv.
The New Jersey OHTF is an initiative set forth to consolidate sustainability balance and enhance the health of people, animals and ecosystems. The unification of these three coherent principles is acknowledged by the OHTF, bringing together a diversification of disciplines such as public health, human and veterinary medicine, epidemiology and academic research.
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn M. LaTourette said in the same press release, “This first Strategic Plan will help spur a coordinated, multi-disciplined response to growing threats to wildlife and agricultural commodities, ultimately better protecting public health.”
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