Karin Kalk

Senior Advisor, Quality Improvement & Advanced Project Management

Throughout her career, Karin has applied project management and quality improvement approaches to improve the delivery of health care services for vulnerable populations.  Prior to joining NHHA, she was Director of Project Management and Quality Improvement for the Orange County Health Care Agency where she provided this technical guidance for the pandemic response as well as in the development of ‘Equity in OC’, an innovative approach to government-supported, community-driven equity improvement efforts. 

While with MindOC, a community based mental health initiative, Karin developed strategies to improve suicide prevention efforts.  And as Director for Health Care Reform with the California Institute for Behavioral Health Solutions, she support counties throughout California to improve their mental health and substance use delivery systems.  For many years, she served as an instructor in CIBHS’ Leadership Institute on leadership for quality improvement.   

Prior to this work in the mental health field, Karin was Vice President and General Manager for ForHealth, Inc., a venture-capital funded company offering a specialized medical program for long term care residents through full and partial risk arrangements with senior health plans.  Before joining ForHealth, she served as Vice President of Operations for AHI Healthcare Systems, a publicly traded managed care company serving over 200,000 members throughout the country. 

Karin received her Masters degree in Health Administration from Duke University, her Bachelor of Arts degree in Animal Physiology from University of California, San Diego and has additional formal training in project management and IHI’s Breakthrough Series improvement methodology.