Dr. Gilmer is a Professor of Health Economics, Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs, and Chief of Division of Health Policy in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. His research has focused on three areas: health insurance and risk adjustment, cost-effectiveness of diabetes care, and mental health services. Dr. Gilmer specializes in research design and data analysis, the use of large data sets including those form Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial health plans, national surveys and census data, and mixed data sets that combine epidemiological data with health insurance claims, and the evaluation of community based interventions to improve chronic disease care to low-income populations.

Dr. Gilmer has published papers examining the determinants and the decline of health insurance coverage, states efforts' to improve coverage, crowd-out of private insurance, and generosity of Medicaid programs. His ongoing research describes the "Faces of Medicaid," or the number and types of Medicaid beneficiaries, their disease burden, and utilization of services; ethnic disparities in disease burden and services use in Medicaid; and variation in technological diffusion across state Medicaid programs. Dr. Gilmer has also developed or co-developed diagnostic and pharmacy based models to adjust health insurance premium payments to health plans enrolling Medicaid and Medicare enrollees, and is active in assisting state Medicaid programs with implementation of these models.

Dr. Gilmer has developed, implemented, and evaluated a combined diabetes and depression care management program, Project Dulce + IMPACT, in community health centers in San Diego County. He also leads teams of health services researchers based in the Health Services Research Center to provide data analysis and performance monitoring for San Diego County Behavioral Health Services and Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Washington.