# Katie Couric

Source: https://onco.cc/people/katie-couric/  
OnCo record `katie-couric` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

After her husband died of colon cancer at 42, she had a colonoscopy live on national television in 2000. Screening rates rose measurably afterwards: the "Couric effect".

## Summary

Katie Couric's husband, the lawyer and broadcaster Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in January 1998 at 42. In March 2000, as co-anchor of NBC's Today, she underwent a colonoscopy on air to demystify the test. A study in Archives of Internal Medicine in 2003 found colonoscopy rates in the United States rose by around a fifth in the months that followed and stayed higher, a finding that entered the literature as the Couric effect. She co-founded the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance in 2000 and Stand Up To Cancer in 2008, which funds collaborative dream teams across institutions. In 2022 she disclosed her own diagnosis of breast cancer and again used it to urge people to keep up with screening.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: public-figure; carer; advocate; patient
- Role: Widow, journalist and later patient; the on-air colonoscopy that lifted screening rates
- Specialisms: Colorectal cancer screening; Cancer awareness; Breast cancer

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Couric
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Couric
- Stand Up To Cancer: https://standuptocancer.org/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Colorectal cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/colorectal/)
- technologies: [Colorectal cancer screening (colonoscopy, FIT, stool DNA, blood)](https://onco.cc/technologies/colorectal-screening/), [Mammography & tomosynthesis](https://onco.cc/technologies/mammography/)
- terms: [Stage shift](https://onco.cc/terms/stage-shift/)
- bottlenecks: [Knowledge reaches practice too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/), [Prevention we already have is not deployed](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-prevention-adoption/), [The hardest cancers are found late](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-early-detection/)
- people: [Sherry Lansing](https://onco.cc/people/sherry-lansing/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/katie-couric.json