member spotlight
Supporting Public Health in Growing King County
by Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer
King County, Washington, is renowned
for its coffee shops, fish markets
and high-profile corporate denizens,
including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and
Microsoft. But the trait that most impacts
the work of the local public health
laboratory is its high rate of growth.
The county—which stretches from the
crest line of the Cascade Range in the
east to Puget Sound in the west—is
home to about 2.1 million residents.
And while the jurisdiction is sparsely
populated in the mountainous inland,
it grows increasingly urban as one
travels seaward, toward the county seat
of Seattle, where 700,000 people live in
the roughly 10-mile-wide strip of land
between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington.
This densely populated area, said Paul
Swenson, PhD, director of the Seattle-
King County Public Health Laboratory,
is “just going nuts” with growth. For
two years running, Seattle has been
named the crane capital of the country,
surpassing New York City, Chicago, Los
Angeles and every other US city in the
number of construction cranes at work.
“The city continues to add thousands
of high-paying jobs, which drives the
cost of housing up,” said Swenson.
Yet, he said, “The high cost of housing
isn’t keeping people from coming to
Seattle.” Local voters just approved
a $54 billion dollar ballot measure
to expand light rail services and
alleviate congestion on city streets.
As a program in the local health
department, Public Health–Seattle &
King County (PHSKC), the laboratory’s
workload rises with the population.
Said Swenson, “Our health department
operates a number of clinics to serve
high-risk populations. That drives
almost all the work that we do.”
Facility
The laboratory takes up 5,000 square
feet in the basement of the West Clinic
of Harborview Medical Center (HMC),
a specialty care facility (including a
world-renowned Level 1 trauma center)
run by the University of Washington.
“Before moving here in 1997,” said
Swenson, “our lab was located in
downtown Seattle in the Public
Safety Building, which was slated
for demolition.” At the time, a voter-
approved bond financed brand
new laboratory construction and
equipment in the county-owned
HMC building, which is situated
just east of Interstate 5 overlooking
Elliott Bay and the downtown area.
Laboratorians enter the building through
the main hospital entrances and then
through a separate laboratory entrance
off one of the main basement hallways.
Swenson stressed that “although we’re
located in the medical center, we’re a
Public Health–Seattle & King County
program. We don’t serve the hospital,
for the most part; we’re just located
here, along with several other public
health programs, because the [HMC]
buildings are all owned by the county.”
The laboratory is primarily a BSL-2
facility, but has a 200-square-foot
BSL-3 suite reserved for TB work.
Director
Swenson was born and raised in Seattle
and earned his undergraduate degree
at Seattle University. After college
graduation, he relocated to the East
Coast for six years to study clinical
and laboratory microbiology at the
Medical College of Virginia (MCV).
He did his doctoral work under the
direction of Mario Escobar, PhD, and
postdoctoral training, also at MCV, under
the direction of Harry Dalton, PhD.
Seattle & King County Laboratory Staff. Back row (l to r): Song Cho, Paul Swenson, Abebe Woldai, Sokkhanha Esteban, Kristine
Mejilla, Robin Cowan, Azza El-Sabaeny. Front row (l to r): Barbara Treen, David Ewing, Justin Nguyen, Candice Le, Alfred Iqbal.
Photo: PHSKC
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LAB MATTERS Fall 2017
“When I finished the post-doc,” Swenson
said, “I moved to New York and directed
the clinical virology laboratory at North
Shore University Hospital on Long Island.
I was there for five years, until I returned
to Seattle in 1986 to take over as the
director of the public health laboratory
here. ... It was actually hard to leave New
York. I had a position there that I was
very happy with. But I couldn’t pass up
the opportunity to come back home.”
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