Former Washington Secretary of Health Mary Selecky, who stayed in Colville for the job, has died: ‘She loved this place until the moment she passed’

Pioneering former Washington Secretary of Health Mary Selecky died earlier this week at age 78.

The Eastern Washingtonian is credited with drastically cutting the rate of smoking and increasing the number of vaccinated children in the course of her 14 years as the state’s top health official.

Selecky was also devoted to Colville, the small town she called home for more than 50 years and where she served as a local health official.

“She is so much of who we are as a health district and as a community,” said Northeast Tri County Health District Administrator Matt Shanz.

Selecky led the Stevens, Pend Oreille and Ferry County health district for 20 years before her time in statewide office.

“She loved this place until the moment she passed away. There were a lot of pulls for her to move full-time to the West Side. But Colville was always the place that was home her,” Shanz said.

Having grown up in Pennsylvania, Selecky found herself in the town 70 miles north of Spokane through a happenstance of “wanderlust,” she said in a 2007 interview with The Spokesman-Review.

Selecky was appointed as Washington Department of Health Secretary in 1999 and remained in the job until her 2013 retirement. First appointed by then-Gov. Gary Locke, she was kept on in the job by Govs. Chris Gregoire and Jay Inslee.

When she got the job, Selecky was “a bit of a longshot” coming from a rural Eastern Washington health district, Locke said in an interview Thursday.

“But the moment I first spoke to her, I saw her enthusiasm and her belief we needed to involve local communities instead of a top-down Olympia approach,” the former governor said. “I am really saddened by the news of her passing. Because her endearing personality was so warm and friendly, she was always able to bring disparate groups together.”

As health secretary, Selecky led campaigns to reduce cigarette smoking and increase rates of childhood vaccination. She led the state’s response to mad cow disease and the 2009 swine flu crisis.

Locke said her work to reduce smoking might be her most enduring impact on the health of Washington residents. For much of the 2000s, Washington reduced cigarette smoking more quickly than most states, and it had been cut by more than a third by the time she left office.

“Mary realized that the key was how smoking targeted young people. Her belief was that once young people start smoking, it is very hard to stop. And it was because of her that was such a focus,” Locke said.

Former Spokane Regional Health District leader Dr. Kim Thorburn saw Selecky “truly respect rural values” as a local and state official.

At the Northeast Tri County Health District, Selecky led efforts on HIV prevention even when many larger public health agencies had not addressed that crisis.

“Mary could take something like HIV prevention – something where there was a lot of pushback – and she was able to bring strategies like a needle exchange to her community and communicate it in a way that made sense for rural Washington,” Thorburn said.

After retiring, Selecky joined Providence’s Community Mission Board and the Stevens County Hunger Coalition Board and served as a clinical professor at University of Washington School of Public Health. She was awarded the Joe Hopkins Memorial Award from the Washington State Hospital Association in 2020.

“I live at 3,600 feet elevation, and the sunsets are fabulous, and the sky full of stars and planets are just incredible,” Selecky said in a 2013 Spokesman-Review interview. “I need to be able to breathe that mountain air and just be and figure out where to invest my time. What I do know is it’s certainly got to touch my heart.”

Arrangements for a funeral and memorial service had not been announced as of Thursday afternoon.