July 03, 2006
Katie Couric colon campaign may be improving
I have helped lead the criticism of Katie Couric's often troublingly non-targeted colon cancer screening campaign. By that I mean that her messages often did not discriminate between people at an age at which a benefit of screening has been proven and people at an age at which the benefit is not so clear and evidence for possibly greater harm exists. She was using her fame and her platform to crusade for screening - sometimes giving troubling advice to all readers and viewers when the message should have been targeted to sub-groups.
Maybe that's getting better. I saw the poster below in Boston Logan airport this weekend. The last line reads: "If you're 50 or older, talk to your doctor and get screened for colorectal cancer." That age category has been missing from many of her previous messages. Maybe it's her partners in this campaign - from the CDC - who injected the evidence-based guideline into this message.
Screening test decisions should be based on evidence, not on emotion. Good things can happen and bad things can happen from what are often framed as "simple tests."
