All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

The colonoscopy is the most effective cancer screening tool available, period. That said, a new study suggests it's not quite perfect. It turns out that the test has a blind spot, like when you're driving, and it may miss some cancers on the right side of the colon.

Doctors once believed the colonoscopy was 90 percent effective at preventing colon cancer deaths. This new research would indicate it's more like 60 or 70 percent effective.

But before you start making excuses, you should listen up: 70 percent is still an amazing track record for any cancer test. Mammograms, for example, are said to be 25 percent effective at preventing deaths from breast cancer. And, there are things you can do to make the colonoscopy more accurate, like follow through with the preparations necessary for the test.

A chance to prevent 70 percent of deaths from colon cancer? I'd say those are odds you can live with.

As many of you know, I lost my husband Jay to colon cancer 10 years ago.

Since then, colon cancer awareness and prevention have been causes near to my heart. And March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness month. My message: Early detection saves lives. I'd like to urge everyone over 50 to get screened.

Over the past decade, a lot of people have helped me get this message out – and we've made a lot of PSAs along the way. Some of them are inspiring. Some are really funny. So we decided to compile some of the best in a single video.

I posted it on my YouTube channel. You'll find it in the featured box at the top of the page. While you're there, check out the other stuff I've been posting — you'll get a good idea of what I've been up to behind the scenes. It's sort of "Katie Unplugged."

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Educating Americans about this disease has been a passion of mine ever since my husband, Jay, died of colon cancer 10 years ago.

Here's the drill: colon cancer is more than 90 percent curable if detected early. So, getting a colonoscopy could be a lifesaving experience.

For more, just click on my Notebook.

Cancer deaths are down -- in large part, because of a dramatic decline in the number of deaths due to colo-rectal cancer. And much of that is due to more Americans getting screened.

Click the video link for more.

Katie and medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook discuss the lead story on tonight's Evening News, about a dramatic drop in cancer deaths.

Click the video link for more.

Last week I traveled to Chicago, where I broadcast the Evening News on Friday and delivered a speech to the American Cancer Society on Saturday. But in-between, I revisited a city where I had once tried to get a job when I was just starting out. That job didn’t work out, but the trip last week proved to be an incredible success.

After 19 years at NBC, I wanted to get to get to know our CBS affiliate WBBM first hand and see the exciting work that General Manager Joe Ahern was doing there. Besides rebuilding the station, he’s actually building a new studio across from City Hall. WBBM has some interesting history of its own: it’s where the first televised presidential debates took place, and we were working right next door to that studio. It made me think about how far we’ve come in the packaging and selling of our candidates. In that first debate, America witnessed a sweating and uncomfortable Richard Nixon with his five o’clock shadow trying to make points against the dashing John F. Kennedy who, with proper make-up and coaching, came off more like a movie star than a politician. It is no wonder the people who heard the debate on the radio had an entirely different impression of the candidates than those who saw those first fuzzy black and white images.

But one doesn’t go to Chicago just to do the news and raise money for the American Cancer Society. One goes to Chicago to eat. And eat I did. Our executive producer, Rick Kaplan, is a Chicago native; so he took it upon himself to give me a magic gastronomical tour of the Windy City...

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Hi everyone.

This year, nearly 155,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colon cancer...about 52,000 will die.

Many of these lives could be spared if more of us got screened.

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and this week we've been looking at how to prevent, detect, and SURVIVE the disease.

A colonoscopy can literally nip cancer in the bud. Yet, while those 50 and over should get screened, only half do.

One reason is it's financially out of reach for many. Just 19 states require insurance companies cover screening colonoscopies...Virginia does because my sister sponsored a bill as a state senator after my husband Jay died in 1998.

47 states require coverage for mammograms. Why not insist the same for colonoscopies?

It may not be at the top of your "to do" list, but no one should die of embarrassment or neglect. If you don't get screened for yourself, do it for the people who love you.

That's a page from my notebook.

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Kelly Wallace speaks with medical producer Dorie Klissas as she edits a piece on diet and colon cancer prevention for tonight's colon cancer series.

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Kelly Wallace is a CBS News Correspondent based in New York.

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Remember what your mother told you? Drink your milk, eat your vegetables and get off the couch. Well, as hard as it might be for you to accept this – Mom was right, especially when it comes to preventing colon cancer. (We're focusing on that for tonight's story on Conquering Colon Cancer on the CBS Evening News.)

Some studies have shown that exercise – walking, jogging, whatever you like to do – can reduce your chances of getting colon cancer by as much as 50 percent.

Consider the case of 59-year-old John Knudson of Seattle who learned his colon was a “regular polyp farm” after his first colonoscopy.

Since his mother and sister also had polyps, he decided to put on his jogging shoes and take part in a study examining the impact of exercise on colon cancer risk. He jogged for about an hour six times a week for a year and has been running about four times a week ever since.

The result? “I’ve been back for a couple follow up colonoscopies and since then, I think the first one I had maybe one polyp and the last one I didn’t have any polyps,” John said in an interview. “So it’s been much better...”

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Katie and Senior Producer Chris Dinan give us a First Look at the broadcast, with special attention to the series about colon cancer that begins tonight.

Just click to the monitor for a preview.