Dr. José Alberto Arévalo serves as Chief Medical Executive of Sutter Independent Physicians, a 650-physician, multi-specialty independent practice association serving the Greater Sacramento Region. A board-certified family physician, Dr. Arévalo brings to this role a distinguished career spanning clinical practice, academic medicine, health plan leadership, and community advocacy spanning more than four decades.

Dr. Arévalo earned his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed both his residency and clinical research fellowship in family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He subsequently joined the faculty of the UC Davis School of Medicine, where he served for 40 years as a professor with a research focus on reproductive health, gestational diabetes, and Type 2 diabetes. His scholarship produced numerous peer-reviewed publications, including a landmark 1988 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association that contributed to the revision of national policy on routine hepatitis B vaccination in children. He served as Director of the Department's Medical Student Education Program and was honored with the UC Davis Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994. For 16 years, he served as Instructor-of-Record and primary physician consultant for Clínica Tepati, a student-run free clinic providing primary care to underserved patients in Sacramento's Alkali Flats neighborhood.

Dr. Arévalo's administrative and health plan leadership experience is equally distinguished. He has served as Northern California Medical Director for Prudential Health Care, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross, and Turtle Health Plan, and as Senior Vice President for Medical Services at Health Plan of the Redwoods, a 78,000-member nonprofit community health plan in Sonoma County. He has also consulted for the California Department of Corporations and served as lead physician for the Perinatal Outreach Unit at Electronic Data Systems, the Medi-Cal fiscal intermediary.

A nationally recognized leader in diabetes policy, Dr. Arévalo was a founding member of the California Diabetes Steering Committee and served as the inaugural Chair of its Guidelines Committee, where he led the development and statewide dissemination of one of California's first evidence-based Consensus Basic Diabetes Care Guidelines through the California Chronic Care Resource Institute (CCHRI). He also served on the statewide Board of the American Diabetes Association, California Affiliate, in collaboration with the Department of Health Services' Diabetes Control Program.

Dr. Arévalo is the Founder and Immediate Past President and Chair of the Sacramento Latino Medical Association, Founder and President Emeritus of the Latinx Physicians of California, and immediate past Chairman of the California Medical Foundation's Network of Ethnic Physician Organizations. He completed the California Healthcare Foundation/UCSF Center for Health Professions Leadership Program in 2005.

His contributions to health equity and physician diversity have earned him numerous honors, including the first California Latino Medical Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Latino Health Issues (1992); The California Wellness Foundation's Champions of Health Professions Diversity Award (2006); the First Annual National Hispanic Health Foundation Leadership Award (2008); the California Medical Association Foundation's Ethnic Physician Leadership Award (2013); the National Medical Foundation Pioneer Award for lifelong commitment to health care for underserved communities (2017); and the Sierra Sacramento Valley Medical Society Community Impact Award (2025).