Community Foundation of New Jersey

Johnson & Johnson: A Partnership for Better Health

Better Health - image of doctor and patientIn 1943, Robert Wood Johnson, the son of the founder of the company, wrote the Johnson & Johnson credo, which endures to this day. It reads, in part, “We must be good citizens — support good works and charities … We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education.”

That credo reflected what the company had been doing ever since its founding in 1886, and it forecast what the company would continue to do and is doing today.

Not surprisingly, since Johnson & Johnson is a pioneer and leader in health care, much of that good work has been, and is, focused on hospitals.

A heritage of aiding hospitals and medical services.

In 1907, the Johnson family helped found St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick.

Beginning with giving it its first typewriter in 1918, Robert Wood Johnson supported Middlesex Hospital in New Brunswick (now Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital).

And he contributed to the education and training of nurses and to the field of hospital management worldwide — including promulgating the then-novel idea that hospitals should be organized by medical specialty.

A heritage that continues to this day.

Johnson & Johnson’s support of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital has been constant for nearly a century.

And the company has done, and is doing, even more. Here are three examples among many:

  • Johnson & Johnson companies in Somerset County have partnered with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Somerset County to support Healthy Kids, Better Health, Better Future — encouraging children and their parents to make healthy food choices and follow a healthy lifestyle.
  • Johnson & Johnson has partnered with the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) to send a mobile health unit (with nurses, physicians, emergency medical technicians and a social worker) into inner city areas of New Jersey — offering comprehensive health care to the uninsured.
  • And, on YouTube, the Johnson & Johnson health channel runs videos with unbranded information promoting a better understanding of health, on everything from obesity and gastric bypass surgery to breast cancer and prostate cancer, from yoga and fitness to diet and nutrition.

The Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Fund.

In 2005 the Community Foundation of New Jersey and Johnson & Johnson partnered to create the Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Fund to support outreach efforts and clinical service delivery in New Jersey hospitals, in counties where the company’s employees work: Somerset, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Union and Morris.

The medical care facilities include JFK Medical Center, Morristown Medical Center, Muhlenberg Hospital, Overlook Hospital, Parker Family Health Center, Princeton Medical Center, RWJ-Somerset Medical Center, and Zufall Health Center.

The partnership’s focus is on health care access and disease prevention and management programs for the underserved, especially among children and young adults at risk of chronic diseases — and on increasing access to wellness programs that influence healthy lifestyle choices.

Thus it addresses priorities such as infant mortality, pediatric obesity, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and prenatal health education and care.

From New Jersey communities to world communities.

As a leading health-care company, Johnson & Johnson has the ability to address, through community engagement, the world’s major health-related issues. What it has learned with its philanthropic partners in New Jersey, improving health care locally, helps it in similar philanthropic activities far beyond the Garden State.

And a healthier world — with less disease and less social unrest that disease can bring — is healthy for New Jersey.

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