Most Influential Seattleites of 2017: Patty Hayes

Seattle Magazine presents the Most Influential Seattleites of 2017.

By Sally James October 15, 2017

Most-Influential-logo-780_2

This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue of Seattle magazine.

She doesn’t ride a white horse or wear a badge, but Patty Hayes, R.N., M.N., is the closest thing King County has to a sheriff for health, trying to protect more than 2 million county residents. The director of Public Health–Seattle & King County since 2015, Hayes, along with her team, shields residents from the dangers of bad restaurant meals as well as 50 reportable illnesses, from tuberculosis and mumps to the less common Ebola and Zika viruses. Amid shrinking budgets, they tracked 5,500 people with reportable infectious diseases in 2016—a 63 percent increase from two years earlier. 

Hayes is a beacon of calm in this turbulence, juggling each outbreak and preserving services for the neediest—including drug addicts and the homeless. The political threats to the federal health care law, and by extension, the Medicaid program in Washington, has added toxic uncertainty. “I find it unconscionable that if you map [health] by ZIP code, there are people whose lives are 20 years shorter than others,” she says. She’s fought for a program called Best Starts for Kids, which provides help for young children and their families to try to prevent health problems later in their lives. Hayes won awards in both 2014 and 2015 for her leadership. The 2014 award was from the Center for Women and Democracy. “I’m energized by the people I work with. I’m humbled every day,” she says.

Read about the rest of 2017’s Most Influential Seattleites here.

 

Follow Us

Seattle: Again The Place To Be

Seattle: Again The Place To Be

Seattle nears pre-pandemic visitor levels in impressive turnaround

Visit Seattle released preliminary figures for 2023 at its annual meeting Wednesday, and found that the region hosted 37.8 million visitors last year, an 8.9% increase from 2022. That’s just 10% less than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.

Foot Traffic Rises Again in Downtown Seattle

Foot Traffic Rises Again in Downtown Seattle

Downtown Seattle Association: Slow recovery continues

Nearly 1.9 million visitors came downtown last month. Downtown averaged 85,000 daily workers, a 16% increase from February 2023. That, however, is only 57% compared to the same period in 2020, right before the pandemic.

Cream of the Chop: Top Chef Kaleena Bliss

Cream of the Chop: Top Chef Kaleena Bliss

Washington native competes on popular Bravo cooking competition

Seattleites will spot a familiar face on the latest season of Top Chef, set in Wisconsin this year. Chef Kaleena Bliss competes for the coveted title on the longstanding cooking competition franchise, now in its 21st year.

Washington’s Woeful Gender-Pay Gap

Washington’s Woeful Gender-Pay Gap

Women across the state earn significantly less than men

Women across the state made $18,4000 less in average wages than men in 2022. New research from the National Partnership for Women and Families found that only Utah has a larger discrepancy, at $20,649.