Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity

Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Illinois has opened a center to study the causes of obesity and find new ways to treat it. In a major initiative aimed at addressing a local and national health epidemic, the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity will aim at treatment, research, education and advocacy. "This is the major epidemic of our time," said Dr. Lewis Landsberg, founder and director of the center told The Chicago Tribune. "Obesity and its complications threaten to replace smoking-related diseases as the pre-eminent health problem that we face." Obesity has root causes that are evolutionary, biological, psychological, sociological, economic and political, Landsberg said. More than one-third of U.S. adults and about 17 percent of children and adolescents have a body mass index that qualifies them as obese, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports