An 8-year-old girl in a pink dress captured the spotlight — and quite a few hearts — during Vanderbilt Health’s Annual Spring Donor Celebration on April 23 while her parents, Elisa and Brad Hill of Nashville, described their family’s journey from anguish to hope and joy.
Before Eden was born, her 20-week anatomy scan revealed that she had complex, congenital heart defects, and the Hills were referred to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Immediately upon her birth at Monroe Carell, Eden was moved to the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where she spent the first 10 months of her life.
Four open-heart operations later, Eden is now in second grade and bubbling with ebullient energy. To honor the lifesaving compassionate care she received at Monroe Carell, her parents established a fund in her name, as Elisa Hill put it, “to be for another family what others were for us.”
Eden’s was one of three stories presented during the program at Conrad Nashville that celebrated the power of giving.
Attendees included members of the Vanderbilt Health Board of Directors, the community advisory boards of Monroe Carell, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, and Vanderbilt Eye Institute, the Canby Robinson Society, the Canby Robinson Legacy Circle, and the Ike and Ann Robinson Society.
In introducing the program, Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vanderbilt Health and Dean of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, acknowledged that this would be his last donor celebration before he steps down from both leadership roles Dec. 31 after nearly 20 years.
“It’s been such a privilege to serve this remarkable institution and to work alongside you,” Balser said. “I want you to know how deeply grateful I am for your trust and for the impact that you have made on patients, and on our future.”
Also presenting were Jane Freedman, MD, Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer, and Juan Salazar, MD, MPH, the James C. Overall Professor of Pediatrics and chair of the Department of Pediatrics.
Balser outlined some of the accomplishments that philanthropy has helped make possible at Vanderbilt Health in recent years. Among them:
- The opening of the Jim Ayers Tower, the largest expansion of the Vanderbilt Health Main Campus, with 200 beds, and the expansion of Monroe Carell, which when fully opened to patients, will include the nation’s second largest neonatal intensive care unit.
- Vanderbilt Health’s world record-setting heart transplant program and its Transplant Center, the nation’s largest in terms of volume for solid organs (including kidneys, livers, pancreases and lungs).
Beyond the statistics, Freedman added, “our patients do better than any place else in the country. It’s not just a lot of patients. It’s a lot of patients living healthier and longer lives with their transplanted organs.”
The bulk of the program was given to patients and families to share their stories of “the greater good,” the profound impact that philanthropy can have in restoring health and saving lives.
Dan Brown, a kidney transplant recipient, remarried after his first wife, Linda, died from breast cancer in 2007. His current wife, Ellen, a retired Vanderbilt Health nurse practitioner, was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease in 2024. On March 31, she received a double-lung transplant.
Before they began their latest health journey together, Ellen and Dan decided to give back “to the people and places from whom we have benefited,” he said. They gave a portion of their estate to support research at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, and another to support the research of William Fissell IV, MD, to develop a bioartificial kidney.
“Tonight is a reminder that none of us takes these journeys alone,” Brown said.
Concluding the program was a video featuring Nathan Dudney and Hannah Dudney, MD, founding members of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Ambassadors, a group of young professionals who, since 2009, have raised $1.5 million in direct donations to support cancer research.
