Gilbert Salinas is the Assistant Director of Health Services for Contra Costa County, as the Inaugural Chief Equity Officer. He will address racism and inequity of treatment and will work to foster inclusion, diversity, and health equity throughout our system and county. Contra Costa Health Services is the largest employer in the County System.

Gilbert Salinas worked as the Chief Clinical Officer for the highly esteemed Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center (RLANRC, hereafter) where he used his 10+ years of Hospital Administrative experience to manage day-to-day operations for clinical and non-clinical Outpatient Services Division. In his position as Chief Clinical Officer, Gilbert acted as an Executive Lead for several departments, including but not limited to Medical Director for Primary Care, Director of Nursing for Outpatient Care, Director for Ambulatory Care, Medical Imaging, and more for a total of 11 direct reports and over 300 employees.

As the former Acting Director of Performance Improvement for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS), Gilbert helped lead system-wide transformation efforts, including the designing, structuring, funding development, and implementation of DHS’s Performance Improvement Program. He also designed and implemented the framework for Patient Advisory Councils in Los Angeles County, which has now been duplicated for all Los Angeles DHS Outpatient Services.

Gilbert is a nationally known advocate for violence prevention and has participated in conferences with many distinguished dignitaries such as President Bill Clinton, State Assembly members, and City Council members. He took part in the Planning and Review Committee for the Surgeon General, Department of Health and Human Services’ ‘Report on Youth Violence’, acted as a Chairman of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles, and was a part of the Transition Team for Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa. He was appointed by the Mayor’s office to the oversight committee’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program and is a past Program Director for the Know Barriers Violence Prevention Program, the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles, as well as Youth Alive’s nationally replicated, hospital-based intervention program ‘Caught in the Crossfire.’ Gilbert has been recognized by Los Angeles County for his work in creating equality for individuals living with a disability and recently was awarded the prestigious Access Award by the Los Angeles County Commission on Disabilities. He is a former Systems Change Advocate with the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, where he worked on improving the lives of those living with a disability on a local, statewide, and national level.

Gilbert has an extensive educational background that begins with a certificate of higher learning from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health followed by a bachelor’s degree in Human Service from Springfield College. He then graduated from the Program for Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard School of Public Health as well as completed his one-year fellowship with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in 2013. Gilbert was one of eight Fellows selected worldwide and was the only participant selected from the United States. He possesses his master’s degree in Public Administration in Healthcare from Liberty University. More recently, he has served in an advisory role for The Josiah Macy Foundation, Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, the United States Office of the National Coordinator, United States Health and Human Services, the Institute of Medicine, and America’s Essential Hospitals.  Gilbert was an advisory member for ‘All In: Data for Community Health’, a learning network of communities that are testing innovative ways to systematically improve community health outcomes through multi-sector partnerships that work to share data and served on the editorial board for Generating Evidence and Methods to Improve Patient Outcomes (eGEMS).

He is a founding board member for the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine and is an Advisory Board Member for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s National Partnership for Patients, and he is an acting member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Equity Advisory Group.