Message from the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. As one of the largest departments within the medical center, we are proud to be home to some 450 primary faculty, 300 community-based volunteer faculty, 118 residents, and over 300 administrative and research staff. The Department is rooted in a rich history of commitment to excellence in research, education, and patient care. Our faculty, fellows and trainees represent the very best of academic medicine – extraordinary people doing incredible things to advance the care for children in Middle Tennessee, across the nation, and throughout the world. The result is a Department which reaches far beyond the walls of our hospital to provide high-quality patient care, to train the next generation of leaders in pediatric medicine, and to advance our knowledge of important conditions that affect vulnerable infants and children through world class research.

The Department is primarily housed within the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, but offers care at some 25 locations across the State of TN. The Children’s Enterprise is fully integrated within the main Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) campus, which includes the Vanderbilt University Hospital, the Ingram Cancer Center, the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, the Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital, and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. Our teams also support pediatric services at our outlying community hospitals. Our full integration within VUMC and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine provides ready access to phenomenal collaborators and world-class facilities and resources for our faculty and trainees. We are a leading pediatric research center consistently ranking in the top-10 for NIH funding among academic departments of pediatrics. In fiscal year 2021, our faculty garnered more than $110M in research awards, with the majority coming from Federal sources, including NIH. Our investigators have made enormous contributions to research in the area of COVID-19, and work in the Department has directly supported the development of new vaccines, antiviral agents, and monoclonal antibody therapies against SARS-CoV-2 infection.  The Department is also home to world-class educators who take great pride in the quality of our training programs for our medical students, residents and fellows. Vanderbilt has trained approximately 40% of all pediatricians currently practicing in Tennessee.  Our training programs also include a world-class pediatric physician-scientist training program (PPSTP).

Diversity and inclusion are core values of the Department of Pediatrics. We strive to have a workforce that represents our community, and we are deeply committed to advancing health equity for the diverse patient populations that we serve. Click here to learn more about our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Nashville, Tennessee is a thriving community of commerce, finance, healthcare, and music. It has been named the #1 Best City for First-Time Homebuyers1 and among the Top 10 Best Cities for Young Professionals (#6)2, Top 15 Cities in the U.S. (#11)3, and Top 10 Friendliest Cities in the U.S. (#9)4. The Nashville metropolitan area is estimated to be home to over 1.96 million people and is diverse and constantly growing.

Whether you have come to our website as a prospective applicant to one of our highly-regarded training programs, an investigator interested in the groundbreaking research within the Department, or you are interested in learning more about the things we do each day to improve child health, I hope you will take the time to explore our site. If you want to learn more or you’d like to connect with us, please don’t hesitate to contact our department.

 

Steven A. Webber, MBChB, MRCP

Steven A. Webber, MBChB, MRCP
James C. Overall Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Pediatrician-in-Chief
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt

 

 

1SmartAsset, The Best Cities for First-Time Homebuyers – 2021 Edition
2SmartAsset, The Best Cities for Young Professionals – 2021 Edition
3Travel and Leisure, The Top 15 Cities in the United States
4Condé Nast Traveler, The 10 Friendliest Cities in the U.S.