A new study led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators found that obese patients undergoing surgery for lung cancer spent more time in the operating room, adding to the nation’s health care bill.

The statistics are jarring. More than 25.8 million children and adults in the United States — 8.3 percent of the population — have diabetes. And predictions are that one in three people will have the chronic disease by 2050.

When patients come to Vanderbilt’s new Center for Medical Weight Loss, the first thing medical director John Cleek, M.D., wants them to understand is how their bodies use energy.

A collaboration between Vanderbilt Pediatric researchers and the Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation Department to prevent obesity is kicking into high gear with the recruitment of 600 area familes.

A California high school student helped accelerate an anti-obesity drug discovery program at Vanderbilt University this summer — and provided the proof-of-principle for a new technique that could save the lab an estimated $250,000 in the process.

New findings point to brain circuitry that communicates about the body’s nutritional status and regulates how nutrients are mobilized.

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death for men in Tennessee and cancer deaths continue to move further away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy People 2020 goal, according to the 2012 Tennessee Men’s Health Report Card.