Cástulo de la Rocha
President and CEO, AltaMed Health Services Corporation
PARTNERS’ 25TH ANNUAL VISION & EXCELLENCE IN HEALTHCARE
LEADERSHIP TRIBUTE DINNER
THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2025, 6-9PM
FAIRMONT CENTURY PLAZA IN LOS ANGELES, CA.
A trailblazer in community health is committed to the under-resourced.
Under the leadership of Cástulo de la Rocha, AltaMed Health Services Corporation grew from a single storefront clinic in East Los Angeles – staffed by volunteers – into the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in the United States. The key to its success? “The fact that we have always stayed true to our mission,” said the 2025 recipient of the Partners in Care Foundation’s Vision & Excellence in Healthcare Leadership Award.
De la Rocha, President and CEO of AltaMed Health Services Corporation, said that he is “privileged and honored to be included in the illustrious groups of individuals” who have been recognized by Partners in Care Foundation.
“I have long admired Partners in Care Foundation and have witnessed the remarkable work they have accomplished over the course of two decades,” he said. “While I’m honored to be recognized as a leader in the health care industry, what is most important is that the work that AltaMed does in communities of need is being recognized.”
At more than 70 sites scattered around Orange County and Los Angeles, AltaMed Health Services Corporation has 5,600 employees and serves almost 648,000 patients annually. It’s come a long way from the small clinic that de la Rocha walked into in 1977.
De la Rocha immigrated to the United States at a young age and worked hard to earn his bachelor’s degree in political science at UC Santa Barbara, later graduating from the UC Berkely School of Law. After graduating, he worked as a staff member at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Francisco. His personal journey has shaped his understanding of the challenges facing immigrant populations, fueling his commitment to improving access to services for those in need.
“A friend who worked for Mayor Tom Bradley suggested, ‘Hey, if you want to get more involved in the community, why don’t you check out this clinic in East LA?’ I came and I applied and got the job. I tell this story all the time. I drove up in a beat-up Volkswagen, and after having been at Berkeley, I had long hair and a goatee and probably interviewed wearing sandals.”
He recalled the first time he saw the clinic that would eventually become AltaMed. “On one side of the building it said East LA Barrio Free Clinic, and on the other side it said La Clínica Familiar del Barrio,” he said. “There was a long line of people outside of the clinic waiting to get a ticket, because they only had X number of slots. It reminded me of what we see at the carnicerías or meat markets, where you take a number, and you wait to receive your order. That’s what people were doing, coming in early, pulling a number, and coming back at 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon to see a volunteer doctor.”
“I saw the line and told myself, I think that I could make a difference here. Either I was very foolish and naive or perhaps very cocky, or maybe both. I was given a three-month contract, and here I am 48 years later.”
When he was hired, the clinic was six months behind in paying rent. Two positions, including his, were funded through the federal Comprehensive Employment Training Assistance (CETA) program. “The doctors, a couple of nurse practitioners, all the lab people – everybody was a volunteer,” he said. “We had a big five-gallon jug, and patients put a quarter in or put a nickel in, and that’s all the money we had.”
“At the time, we were primarily serving working class families – mostly Mexican, and first generation Mexican-Americans – folks with nowhere else to turn. And while AltaMed is still providing services to communities, uninsured populations, we’ve now expanded our reach far beyond East LA to cover a much larger geographic area.”
One thing that remains constant for de la Rocha and AltaMed is their commitment to improve health care access and outcomes by providing superior quality health and human services.
“Our goal was to narrow those gaps and to address the issues of our community in a bilingual setting, and to deal with what today we refer to as social determinants of health, which is violence, which is discrimination, which is hunger and poverty,” said de la Rocha. “Those are issues we’ve been dealing with for as long as I’ve been at AltaMed.
“In the early years, it was strictly confrontational politics. Creating community clinics was a struggle, as well as getting people to understand that a social environment is impactful on people’s lives and health than what we were able to deal with in the clinical setting.”
“There’s been a huge learning curve in terms of managing the kind of care that we provide in high need communities. For the general community to understand that and to commit to work in those communities, that’s been a huge struggle. But as an organization, we have adapted and, in many cases, we have innovated to deal with the challenges of providing care in high need communities.”
“While it was challenging many years ago, there is a lot more collaboration and cooperation with institutions than we ever saw in the past. We’re seen now as innovators and pioneers in the communities where we work. I think that’s part of the respect that people now have for what AltaMed stands for in our community. Our patients’ satisfaction and employee engagement is very high, and our brand is very respected in our communities. This is something I’m very proud of.”
While AltaMed’s growth and impact under Cástulo de la Rocha’s leadership are undeniable, his journey is just as compelling. In the next part of our conversation, de la Rocha reflects on his early life, the challenges he overcame as an immigrant, the mentors who shaped his path, and his vision for the future of healthcare access.
Part 2: A Journey of Leadership, Legacy, and the Future of Community Health
In this second part of our interview with Cástulo de la Rocha, we explore his early life, the mentors who shaped his career, and his vision for the future of healthcare access. From overcoming language barriers as an immigrant to spearheading civic engagement initiatives, de la Rocha’s story is one of resilience, leadership, and an unwavering commitment to his community.
When asked about the best advice he’d ever been given, de la Rocha said it was distilled from many bits of wisdom received from his parents and grandparents. “The salient thing that I would take from their experiences is it’s about never backing down from a challenge, to be persistent, to be insistent at times, and to always look at ways of doing the right thing,” he said.
“A lot of what I learned as a young man, in high school and then onto the universities is around social justice. My work has always been about seeking what is just and what is fair – nothing more, what is just and what is fair.”
The people who most inspire de la Rocha don’t simply philosophize about doing things but are in the trenches and moving things forward. One of de la Rocha’s first jobs was working as a shoeshine boy at a barber shop in East Los Angeles. “I used to shine Edward Roybal’s shoes. He was a city councilman, then a congressman, a person I greatly admired,” he said. “Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez are two people that I respected for their convictions and their views, and more importantly the direct action that they took to change things.”
“In college, Jesus Chavarria was my professor, a brilliant guy who taught me a lot about politics and mobilization, organizing and strategizing, tactics and visions. It pushed me to become actively involved in student organizations, which help shaped my understanding of leadership and community engagement”
As a leader now, de la Rocha strives to embody these same principles. He aims to be a role model for hard work and continuing education. “I’ve never stopped learning, and I certainly encourage my staff to do the same,” he said.
“Another thing is keeping the vision alive of what AltaMed is all about, living the mission and the vision itself, and assuring that there’s always forward momentum in executing our strategic goals. From my own background, having been raised in Chihuahua, Mexico, and as an immigrant here in the United States, I understand the issues that confront our community, and I hire people who also have lived or understand those issues. There is a unique connection that we share in terms of our history and our lived experiences in the communities we serve that provides a certain alignment. We share a common commitment to better serve our communities.”
When de la Rocha was born in 1948, his family lived on a ranch in an isolated community in the mountains of Chihuahua. Access to health care was nonexistent; there were no doctors, hospitals or clinics.
“There was no electricity, no school, no telephones, no radios, no televisions, none of that,” he said. He recalls that walking or riding on horseback were the only modes of transportation available to him growing up, a reflection of the limited resources in his small town. “My family had been there for almost 200 years – and I ended up in East LA at the age of 10. We came to the United States like so many other immigrant populations, seeking opportunities for a better life, to live the American dream if I may.”
Although he initially struggled to master speaking English, de la Rocha was able to form connections with his peers and was elected student body president in junior high and at Roosevelt High School, where he was inducted into the school’s Alumni Hall of Fame in 2023.
“There was almost nothing that I felt I could not do, except some of the things that I needed to do from an academic standpoint,” he said. “Having lost those early years of education, I always felt challenged. I was in non-English speaking classes, and I always had a very strong accent. That became a problem, especially when as student body president I had the duty of reading the bulletin every morning. People used to make fun of my accent, including teachers, and it was demoralizing. It was a terrible thing to experience as a young man, but somehow I felt strong enough to meet those challenges.”
It was during his high school years that de la Rocha became involved in community organizing, canvassing in his neighborhood in support of two Latinos who were running for the board of education. “I loved that you could make a difference by voting, and by getting people engaged and involved. I got involved politically, and it hasn’t stopped.”
“When I started at the university (UC Santa Barbara), that passion for creating change and improving access to higher education, that passion for feeling that you should not be treated as a second-class citizen, all those things became very real.”
That passion led him to UC Berkely School of Law and eventually to a small East LA clinic that was the seed that grew into AltaMed.
When asked what the biggest thrill of his career was, de la Rocha replied, “I’m living the biggest thrill every day. I feel that as an organization, we have accomplished a great deal. We have built the model that we wanted to build, that truly engages our community, not only in the delivery of care, but in social political issues and civic activities. So, I feel very good where I’m at now. I have some very ambitious goals for the future, but I must tell you that I feel as satisfied and as comfortable in my skin as I have ever felt.”
Those ambitious goals include working to ensure that more communities throughout Southern California have access to primary health care services and good quality care. “There’s still a lot of work to do in Latino communities,” he said. “I was at a hospital recently and was blown away by the lines of people outside an emergency department. How can this still be true in American society? How can it be? So, there’s work to be done.”
Another cause that inspires de la Rocha’s passion is the AltaMed art collection. While he was a student involved in the civil rights movement, he got to know poets, painters and other artists. When he became the head of La Clinica Familia Del Barrio (the first of the AltaMed clinics) in 1977, he began to collect Chicano art, Latino art and Mexican art. “Art tells a story, and when I walk into an examination room as a patient and if I see something that I can relate to directly, that matters,” he said. “Whether it’s a painting of a park or a family gathering, if it’s something that reminds them of their country of origin, people relate to the art in a very real way.”
There were very positive responses from both employees and patients, he said. “It was sort of a hobby and became a passion, and now it’s an obsession,” he said. With 4,000 pieces of art, he believes it’s the largest collection of Chicano art in the United States. “I’d love to be able to build a museum for that art collection at some point,” he said. “Shame on all of us, that there is no museum in Los Angeles that focuses on Chicano and Mexican art. With 74 percent of the kids in the city’s school being Latino and no museum to take them to, that’s embarrassing.”
Another project still on his to-do list is helping to create pathways for Latino health care providers and develop solutions to address the shortage of Latino doctors and professionals in the field. “We can create a whole new generation of doctors, nurses and administrators who really care about working in our communities. Despite Latinos making up 40% of the population in California, only 4% of the doctors in the state are Latino. Why do we still have this issue? There’s study that show the quality of care that patients perceive significantly increases with having providers who understand their language and understand their culture. Why aren’t we training more Latino doctors and more professionals? That has to change.”
One conduit for change is AltaMed’s civic engagement campaign, My Vote, My Health. Back in 2017, de la Rocha saw data showing that Latino populations had the lowest voter turnout of any ethnic group. AltaMed made a significant investment in building a campaign aimed at reaching low-propensity voters, people who are U.S. citizens but have not voted in the last eight or 10 years. My Vote, My Health’s outreach includes knocking on doors, emails, texts, telephone calls and letters.
“When Martin Luther King was organizing any community, the first place he would go was the church,” de la Rocha said. “They were trusted in the African-American communities and still are. We don’t have the equivalent of that in Latino communities, but we have community health centers that have been providing care for 50 years in some of these communities. We’re a trusted institution, and we use that brand strength to encourage our patients and residents around our clinics to vote.”
“The model that we developed back in 2018 now has become a model adopted statewide, and we’re taking this to Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and wherever there are community health centers. This is the way to empower those communities to become actively and civically engaged.”
Committed to community volunteerism and improving the lives of the Latino community, de la Rocha actively contributed to organizations that uplift and empower the Latino community, sitting on the boards of the Museum of Latin American Art, the Latino Theater Company, and the Latino Victory Fund. In addition to his leadership, he maintains a strong focus in his own wellbeing, dedicating time each day to exercise daily at home or a fitness center, mixing cardio, weights and stretching.
He also enjoys “a wonderful glass of wine. We host a wine-tasting event at AltaMed called East LA Meets Napa, and it features mostly Latino winemakers out of the Napa area. I invite my most intimate friends, and generally about 3,000 people show up.”
Previous recognition for de la Rocha’s accomplishments includes being honored alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda in 2017 with a Medallion of Excellence from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. In 2018, he received the Aaron L. Brown Memorial Public Service Award from the National Association of Community Health Centers, and in 2019, he was named the Los Angeles Business Journal’s Health Care System/Network Executive of the Year.
In 2023, the University of La Verne named their new health sciences department the Cástulo de la Rocha College of Health and Well-Being, in honor of his legacy as a trailblazer in community health and commitment to the development of the future health care workforce.
The presentation of de la Rocha’s Vision & Excellence in Health Care Leadership Award will take place at Partners in Care Foundation’s 25th Annual Vision & Excellence in Health Care Leadership Tribute Dinner on Thursday, June 12, 2025. To learn more about the event, register to attend or sign up as a sponsor, please visit Partners’ 2025 Annual Vision & Excellence in Health Care Leadership Tribute Dinner.
Partners in Care Foundation, based in San Fernando, is a pioneering nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the healthcare landscape. With a mission to shape the evolving health system, they focus on co-designing and executing innovative, high-value models of community-based care and developing an alternate health care workforce.
Guided by their vision of “healing with vision, leading with purpose,” Partners in Care Foundation has achieved remarkable success in reducing hospital readmission rates, designing cost-saving models, and improving health outcomes. Their groundbreaking work has set industry best practices, demonstrating the effectiveness of community-based interventions in addressing social determinants of health and enhancing patient well-being.
By implementing these innovative approaches, Partners in Care Foundation is not only promoting better health outcomes but also ensuring that every individual receives the care and support they need to manage their health and improve their quality of life. Their commitment to excellence and their proven track record make them a leader in the field, inspiring others to follow their example and strive for a better and more effective healthcare system.
