Burr turning full attention to new Children's Hospital
Dr. Ian Burr is stepping down as chair of Pediatrics to focus on the new Children's Hospital. (Photo by Donna Jones Bailey)
Dr. Ian M. Burr, James C. Overall Professor and Chair of Pediatrics for more than a decade, is stepping down to focus on the development of the new Vanderbilt Children¹s Hospital.
The change comes as the pediatric hospital creates its plans to build a freestanding facility for children¹s health services. Burr will become Associate Vice Chancellor for Children¹s Services effective this spring.
"Ian has dedicated himself to this dream since he arrived in 1971, and especially so since he assumed the triple role of chair of Pediatrics, medical director and physician-in-chief of the Children¹s Hospital in 1988," said Dr. Harry R. Jacobson, vice chancellor for Health Affairs.
"Creating a Children¹s Hospital that is an anchor and a hub of a region-wide network of services for children has been his vision and his passion for nearly 30 years."
Burr, who has worked "tirelessly to serve the children of Middle Tennessee," will assume a full-time role in overseeing the design and development of the new hospital, the design and organization of its inpatient and outpatient clinical activities, the management of the network of community services and will coordinate these aspects of the project with the fund-raising campaign headed by Monroe Carell. Carreel is the chairman and chief executive officer of Central Parking Corp. whose family earlier established the Ann and Monroe Carell Jr. Family Chair in Pediatric Cardiology.
The new children¹s hospital, focusing on family-centered care, will allow Vanderbilt to better serve the region, which has seen tremendous growth since 1980. Construction is expected to begin early next year at the corner of 22nd Avenue South and Pierce Avenue.
Other key team players in the efforts to build the new hospital include Misty Chambers, R.N., who was recently named as director of Planning for Children¹s Hospital; Daniel M. Buxbaum, Ph.D., longtime director of Space and Facilities Planning; the architectural firm of Earl Swensson Associates of Nashville; design consultants Boston-based Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott; John R. Sparks, VUMC¹s project manager; Centex Rogers; and the "design team" made up of faculty, staff, volunteers, patients and families.
The new hospital will replace the existing facility, which was established in 1971. Vanderbilt Children¹s Hospital is the region¹s only health care facility dedicated to the care of children. Services range from basic primary care to specialty treatments to home health care and long-term follow up of chronic illnesses.
Burr joined the VUMC staff in 1980 as an associate professor of Pediatrics and head of Pediatric Endocrinology. In 1975 he became associate director of the genetics division. He left Vanderbilt in 1986 to head the pediatrics department at the University of Florida¹s College of Medicine in Gainesville and returned to VUMC to head the Pediatrics department in 1988. Under his direction the department has greatly expanded it clinical services and has become of this country's top ten Pediatric departments in research funding.
A native of Australia, Burr received his medical degree in 1959 from Melbourne University. He came to the United States on a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Institutes of Health to tutor in the department of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco.
A formal search for a new Chair of Pediatrics is expected to begin early this spring.