Starting March 16, pediatric surgeon Dennis Lund will join Stanford Children’s Health and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford as the new chief medical officer. Lund will also serve as the associate dean for material and child health at the School of Medicine.

Lund succeeds Kenneth Cox, a professor of pediatrics, who is retiring from his role as chief medical officer. Cox will continue to serve as chief of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at the hospital, as well as medical director of the pediatric liver transplant program.

In his new position, Lund will partner with Kim Roberts, the chief administrative officer and physician CEO of Packard Children’s Health Alliance.

Lund started his over-30-year career in medicine after graduating from Harvard Medical School and began his career as a pediatric trauma and transplant surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital. There, he developed a level-1 trauma program and began an intestinal transplant program.

He later became a professor of surgery and surgeon-in-chief at the University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital and in 2001 was appointed chair of the university’s Division of General Surgery. He played a key role in the creation of the American Family Children’s Hospital, which opened in 2007.

Before coming to Stanford, he served as executive vice president of Phoenix Children’s Medical Group and surgeon-in-chief at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

“I’m very excited to be coming to Stanford,” Lund said to the Stanford Medicine News Service. “There are a lot of challenges ahead for academic medical centers because of what’s happening in health care in the United States. Being at Stanford will really allow me to have a role in shaping the solution.”

Contact Catherine Zaw at czaw13 ‘at’ stanford.edu.