Vicente Gracias, MD, FACS, FCCP, FCCM, is a senior executive and faculty member at Rutgers. As senior vice chancellor for clinical affairs, he serves as the chief clinical officer of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, and in his role as vice president of health affairs for Rutgers and president and board chair of Rutgers Health Group, he leads Rutgers’ integrated interprofessional faculty group practice and promotes ongoing value-driven care across the university. Gracias also is the chief academic officer for RWJBarnabas Health.

Gracias, a professor of surgery, is a leading expert in health system design, structure, and performance improvement. He is the founding director of two fellowships in surgical critical care and acute care surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and he continues his leadership role within Rutgers Global Surgery, which he helped found and which supports global health and global surgery initiatives.

Gracias collaborates with colleagues at Rutgers, nationally, and internationally through multiple projects, including the Latin American Indicator Research Collaboratory’s Global Surgery Research Unit. He has published extensively on acute care surgery and, currently, on its role in expanding the surgical workforce in Latin America and using global surgical indicators to improve trauma/surgical care nationally.