Whether The Couric Effect Is Real, It’s Not Enough

CDC says despite improvements colorectal cancer screening rate remain too low.

DANIEL S. LEVINE
The Journal of Life Sciences

I am not a regular viewer of morning television, but circumstances were such that early one day in March 2000, I watched Katie Couric get a colonoscopy on the Today show. Perhaps it is chance viewings like this that explains why I am not a regular viewer of morning television.

Couric, who lost her 42-year-old husband Jay Monahan to colon cancer, was a woman with a cause. She apparently was so successful at raising awareness about the importance of getting screened for colon cancer that researchers dubbed the 20 percent increase in colonoscopy rates in the months that followed the broadcast “The Katie Couric effect.”

But that clearly has not been enough. Researchers at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in the July 2008 issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention that only about half of U.S. men and women 50 and older receive the recommended tests. The CDC conducted a National Health Interview Survey in 2005. Although this was an improvement over the 43 percent of screened individuals reported in 2000, it is still far from optimal, researchers said.

CDC epidemiologist Jean Shapiro believes a major problem is insurance coverage. Among people without health insurance, researchers found the rate of colorectal cancer screening was 24.1 percent, compared to more than 50 percent of insured Americans, depending on the type of insurance. Among patients without a usual source of health care, the screening rate was 24.7 percent compared to 51.9 percent of patients with a usual source of healthcare.

“If we can increase the number of people who have health care coverage, we should be able to increase colorectal cancer screening rates,” said Shapiro.

As for the Katie Couric effect, Shapiro says the increase in colorectal cancer screening rates observed from 2000 to 2005 may have been due in part to increased media coverage of the importance of colonoscopy. However, Shapiro adds, the increase was probably also due to the fact that in 2001, Medicare expanded its coverage for colonoscopy screenings to a wider range of patients.