Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos has appointed additional faculty to contribute to the campuswide strategic planning effort that an executive committee began over the summer.

Cumberland Pediatric Alliance (CPA) is joining the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN). The transition of operations is expected to be complete by October.

Cardiac surgeons recently performed Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute’s 100th ventricular assist device (VAD) implant.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is now certified as Tennessee’s only teaching site for an advanced trauma surgical skills training course offered at fewer than 50 hospitals worldwide.

Neal Patel, M.D., MPH, has been named chief medical informatics officer for the Vanderbilt University Health System. Patel, professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, has served as the inpatient chief medical information officer since 2006.

Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will begin the 2013-2014 Flexner Discovery Lecture Series next Thursday, Aug. 29, with a discussion of “Advances in Addiction Science.”

Robert and Michele McClellan expected the experience of their infant son’s birth via cesarean section to be like that of other women who had had the procedure — unable to witness their son’s exit from the womb and for him to be immediately whisked away.