“Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and our pediatric specialists fulfill a crucial role within our health system. Continued growth of the Department of Pediatrics, along with expanding the hospital’s unique offerings is essential to our mission,” said C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer for VUMC. “I want to welcome Dr. Salazar to this important role and look forward to working with him as we seek to enhance these services.”

Serving more than 1,800 children and families daily, Monroe Carell is completing construction on two additional floors, and by 2027 will have over 400 beds for children. Patients from 48 states seek care from an extraordinary range of pediatric specialties and subspecialty services, including many only available at select national centers.


“I am excited to welcome Dr. Salazar to our leadership team at Monroe Carell and VUMC. He comes to us with deep experience in both building and leading mission-based clinical, research and training programs. Throughout the interview process, I appreciated his spirit of collaboration and passion about these missions and his true commitment to the people who carry out these endeavors. I look forward to partnering with him to continue to advance our care for children and families, support discovery and ensure the best possible training for our future pediatric providers,” said Meg Rush, MD, MMHC, professor of Pediatrics and President of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. “I am grateful to Dr. Cooper for his close partnership as we await Dr. Salazar’s arrival later this year.”

Salazar, who also led the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Connecticut Children’s and is the current director of Connecticut Children’s Pediatric, Youth and Family HIV Program, has received NIH grants to study the human innate immune response to the causative agents of Lyme disease and syphilis. He is currently funded by the NIH to develop a first-of-its-kind syphilis vaccine. Most recently his team received funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19.

Salazar is a current recipient of Ryan White Care Act federal funding to coordinate and provide statewide HIV treatment and prevention services in Connecticut for women and children. Having led several NIH and pharmaceutical industry-sponsored pediatric and adolescent HIV clinical trials and long-term follow-up studies, he is frequently interviewed by local and national news media regarding pediatric health and infectious diseases topics.

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