Mr. Swanson has spent his career serving the Tillamook community, beginning as a teen volunteer and progressing through more than 20 roles before becoming president of Adventist Health Tillamook, a critical access hospital on Oregon’s north coast. A licensed paramedic since 1989, Mr. Swanson has guided the hospital through pandemics, wildfires, winter storms and flooding in one of the most presidentially declared disaster-prone counties on the West Coast. He also chairs the Tillamook County emergency management committee. Among his most significant recent accomplishments, he led the reopening of the Tillamook Kidney Center in 2025, restoring local dialysis services after a closure had forced medically vulnerable patients to travel long distances multiple times per week for life-sustaining treatment. Mr. Swanson also led a $22 million surgical services expansion and championed passage of a $14.4 million bond for a health education facility at the local community college to strengthen the rural workforce pipeline. Under his leadership, Adventist Health Tillamook achieved a 4-star CMS hospital rating in 2025 and received the 2025 “Oregon Rural Health Excellence Award” from Oregon Rural Health for its community-based nursing services program. He serves on the board of the Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization and the Tillamook Family Counseling Center.
