I finally figured out how to include another view at the top of a UITableViewController. I think this will be necessary (or at least helpful) to mimic the Contact edit view in the Contacts app.

gistfile1.m

-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewWillAppear:animated];

  // Replace "HeaderSubViewNibName" with the actual name of the xib file to load
  // your header view.
  // This returns an array, hence the objectAtIndex: to get the first (and only)
  // item in the array.
  UIView *headerView =  [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"HeaderSubViewNibName" owner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0];


  // This is an alternate option, to load a ViewController within the storyboard.
  // The Storyboard ID must be set on the view controller in the Identity Inspector.
  // Note that this will fail since headerView is already declared above: choose one
  // or the other.
  UIViewController *vc = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"HeaderSubViewController"];
  UIView *headerView = vc.view;


  // Set the width and height here as desired. Otherwise, it will appear
  // full-height, pushing the TableView below down off the visible portion of
  // the view.
  [headerView setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 100)];

  // Replace this to configure the header view as needed. In my testing, I added
  // a UIImageView to the header sub-view, so I set the image to show.
  UIImageView *img = (UIImageView*)[headerView viewWithTag:1111];
  [img setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"placeholder.jpg"]];
  
  // Set the header view.
  [self.tableView setTableHeaderView: headerView];
}

My problem right now is that the UITableViewController is in use in a storyboard, inside of a navigation controller. I'd like to be able to segue to a new view controller when an object in the header view is tapped, but since that view is outside the navigation controller workflow, it doesn't work. Not sure how to solve this.

Quick update: it turns out that you can drag a View directly into a UITableViewController

And with a label in that view: