Cástulo de la Rocha: Profiling a Nationally Recognized Healthcare Executive

A leading advocate for affordable healthcare in California and across the United States, Cástulo de la Rocha oversees AltaMed Health Services Corporation as the non-profit entity’s longtime President and Chief Executive Officer. Maintaining this post for over three and half decades, Mr. de la Rocha manages 44 treatment sites spread across Southern California that serve more than half a million patients each year. Responsible for an operating budget of nearly $200 million, he plays a key role in developing and implementing AltaMed’s growth strategy in partnership with the healthcare group’s Board of Directors. As the company’s most prominent pubic persona, Mr. de la Rocha also works in close collaboration with a vast network of public and private agencies to help some of the state’s most vulnerable residents gain access to excellent medical care, regardless of extenuating financial hardship issues.    

Bringing a diverse background in law and organizational administration to his leadership duties at AltaMed Health Services, Cástulo de la Rocha has authored numerous research papers that explore the social and economic benefits of community healthcare initiatives in underserved regions. Early in his career, Mr. de la Rocha partnered with the University of California, Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking Mental Health Research Center to produce an archival study entitled “Health Care Utilization by Low-Income Clients of a Community Clinic” and subsequently issued a status report on the state of community healthcare as it applied to nationwide populations, the findings of which he presented at a California Community Health Institute conference in 1985. In the years that followed, Mr. de la Rocha continued to push for measurable change in his field as President of the California Network of Health Providers, one of several influential positions he presently holds outside of AltaMed. 

Chosen as one of the healthcare sector’s Top 10 Latinos by Latino Leader Magazine in 2008, Cástulo de la Rocha moved on to earn awards from the Mexican American Bar Foundation, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, The Latino Coalition, National Medical Fellowships, and the University of California at Berkeley’s Chicano Latino Alumni Association. A UC Berkeley alumnus, he obtained his J.D. from the venerable academic institution in 1975.