(a) “Local health agency” means any county, regional, municipal or other governmental agency organized for the purpose of providing health services, administered by a full-time health officer and conducting a public health program pursuant to law.

(b) “Commissioner” shall mean the State Commissioner of Health or his designee.

(c) “Special projects and development fund” shall mean the fund established in section 7 of this act.

(d) “Priority health services” means those core activities pertaining to communicable disease and chronic illness as contained in the “standards of performance” or supplemented from the list of recognized activities as contained in the “standards of performance,” and designated annually by the commissioner with the approval of the Public Health Council. For the purposes of this subsection, “standards of performance” means the “Recognized Public Health Activities and Minimum Standards of Performance for Local Boards of Health in New Jersey” as prescribed by the Public Health Council of the State Department of Health under authority of P.L.1947, c. 177 (C. 26:1A-1 et seq.).

(e) “Public health priority fund” shall mean State funds for priority health services to be rendered by local health agencies but shall not include grants from the special projects and development fund.

(f) “Annual expenditures for health purposes” shall mean the local effort as represented by the expenditures by a local health agency for health services which comply with the “standards of performance” excluding any sum paid to the local health agency as public health priority funds under the provisions of this act.

(g) (1) “Noninstitutional population” shall mean the number of inhabitants of a municipality or a group of municipalities making up a local health agency jurisdiction as enumerated in the last Federal census, or by a special census made by the Federal Bureau of the Census, or as estimated annually by the Department of Labor and Industry, whichever is the most recent, except that military personnel living on military reservations, inmates of Federal, State, and county institutions, and boarding students of colleges and universities shall be excluded.

(2) “Special needs population” shall mean the sum of the number of persons having income less than the poverty level and the number of persons over the age of 65, as listed in the most recent Federal census.

(h) “Full-time health officer” means a holder of a license as a health officer issued by the State Department of Health and who is employed by a local health agency to function during all the working hours of the regularly scheduled work week of the governmental unit to which the local health agency is attached and not regularly employed during the working hours of that scheduled work week in other activities for which he receives remuneration.

(i) Deleted by amendment.

(j) Deleted by amendment.

(k) “Criteria for participation” shall mean that a local health agency serving a minimum population of 25,000 is under the administrative direction of a full-time health officer, and all other employees are appropriately qualified and licensed as required by law. The minimum population of 25,000 may be waived at the discretion of the commissioner in the case of a local health agency which from the period beginning January 1, 1960, has carried on and continues to carry on a comprehensive public health program under the direction of a full-time health officer.

L.1966, c. 36, s. 3. Amended by L.1977, c. 332, s. 3, eff. Jan. 23, 1978.