Ron Simms, executive of King County, Washington, is working to make the county—which includes the City of Seattle—the healthiest in the nation. In this interview, Sims discusses the importance of designing for active living—and why he’s taking it personally.

Why active living
“Active living is smart. Walking, bicycling, exercising, good buses, small tight communities where you know your neighbor—all these things are really good because when you have that social network, and particularly active living communities, it is really interesting watching how kids learn. We can talk about ‘why don’t schools work?’ but it is because they are no longer community connected. So you create your community connectors. Those are the things that give a young person a sense of place and purpose.”

The memo that brought designing for health to the forefront
“We were flattening and looking across sectors and then we had this very powerful memo about whether or not we were designing our communities correctly…It is nice to have a planner the caliber of Karen Wolf [King County senior executive policy advisor and the memo’s author - in the photo below with Executive Sims], an avid bike rider and swimmer. And when she raised the issue of how our community plans should look, it was easy to see, ‘why isn’t public health involved?’

Integrating land use, transportation, health and economics
I think every community is different and needs a catalyst, a reason. In ours it was this convergence of trying to address public health needs on the obesity epidemic, healthcare costs, smarter land use decisions, connectivity—which is key—having an efficient transportation system, trying to make growth management work so we had a definitive urban/rural line for sustained food agriculture here—and do that all at once. I think we’re really close to doing it right.”

Fighting the obesity epidemic across race, class and income
“The number one killer in America is sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise and what we eat. That is particularly true if people are poor or of color.

We want a healthy population. Anybody who lives here we want them to have good health. Type 2 diabetes is the greatest threat to American healthcare and American healthcare can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. It’s a tremendous cost. It will break the back of the American healthcare system.

Obesity will last as long as we do not get people out of their cars, as long as do not have trails and parks. And that requires us to plan and build those trails and parks and realize that in the end you move across race, income, urban areas. The key is knowing that exercise is the best healthcare in America.”

Government leadership is crucial
“You have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that people in large urban areas no longer have shorter lives and a very diminished quality of life because you have not designed your neighborhoods with parks and trails to keep them well. You are sanctioning people to early death and that is inexcusable for a public official.

The federal government will soon arrive at the same conclusions as we have as public health officials, realize that the investments we’ve made in parks and trails and trying to keep people physically fit and giving them access to healthy foods is far, far cheaper.”

Tap into the nonprofit community
The Sammamish trail just reminded us of what’s important…Sammamish Trail is for everybody, but the citizens of Sammamish have taken personal ownership because it’s their way of being able to walk up and down and see a neighbor they haven’t seen in awhile, or seeing their neighbors, or seeing a friend they didn’t even know was in their community. It was a great investment…But if we didn’t have the Cascade Bicycle Club …and Cascade Land Conservancy we would never have done this. And this goes to a partnership; Cascade Land Conservancy bought it, we bought it from them. They had the money to do it much more quickly. Had we tried to be the purchaser of it we would have been probably still trying to acquire it today because of the political forces that were not necessarily reflective of the community interests. It would have been very challenging. So the nonprofits came in and got the work done and came back to us with an opportunity to partner with them. It’s a great trail, a great trail, right along the lake.”

Making the investment
“People criticize gentrification, however I speak of it as re-investment… The Key is not to complain about the re-investment but to figure out how to go into areas where you have predominantly poor people, where you do not have first-time home purchase opportunities in redesigning those areas. You do that by a conscious decision. The government has a great capacity to do that and everybody makes money.”

Leaving a legacy of healthy communities
I’d like our legacy to be for people to come here and have clean water and clean air and were able to sustain their health… The opportunity should always be presented. It should not be a hurdle they are going over, it should be a door that they’re able to walk through.”

Ron Sims is a dynamic leader who has embraced active living in his role as an elected official and in his personal life (he’s training for the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic in July).

This profile was created by Active Living Network, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.