Dennis Hsieh, MD, JD

Dr. Dennis Hsieh, MD, JD is the chief medical officer at Contra Costa Health Plan. Previous to this he was an assistant professor of emergency medicine and the Director for Social Medicine and Community Health for Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, which is part of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. He focuses on access to care and the social determinants of health (SDOH), including SDOH screening and interventions across clinical settings, hospital-based violence intervention programs, medical-legal community partnerships (MLCPs), and re-entry from jail. He is the former medical director of the Whole Person Care Jail re-entry program. Dennis has a special interest in addressing SDOH such as violence, food, housing, and financial strain to improve health. He co-founded the hospital-based violence intervention program at Harbor-UCLA and is now co-leading the development of a trauma recovery center at Harbor-UCLA. Dennis is a founding member of the UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine’s Section on International and Domestic Health Equity (IdHEAL, www.idheal.org); ACEP’s Social Emergency Medicine Section and is the section current chair; and SAEM’s Social Emergency Medicine and Population Health Interest Group. Dennis earned his A.B. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard, J.D. from Yale and M.D. from UC San Francisco.