U. Cancer Center to be featured on `Today'

Katie Couric, the host of NBC's Today show, is set to spend next month urging millions of viewers to call the Penn Health System. Couric, who lost her husband to colon cancer in 1998, will lead the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance's public information campaign for the second year in a row -- an event that will involve the Penn Cancer Center. During a segment on the Today show and related commercials, which will air at the beginning of March, viewers will see a toll-free number for information on colon cancer flashed across the screen. That number will be assigned to a phone bank operating out of Penn's Cancer Center. "You could just imagine Katie Couric talking about it on the Today show," said Randi Marcus, the volunteer coordinator at the Cancer Center. "The phone will go off the wall." Anil Rustgi, an advisor to the NCCRA, said the decision to use Penn's facilities was based on the success of the Cancer Center's OncoLink Web site, which receives "thousands of hits a month." "The NCCRA wanted to use the [University's] OncoLink as a vehicle for obtaining inquiries from patients interested in participating in studies," Rustgi said. "OncoLink is held as a paradigm [and] is nationally renowned." Rustgi, who is also chief of gastroenterology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said that the NCCRA's choice of Penn is a "tribute to the Cancer Center." "It speaks to [the] Cancer Center's foresight in establishing [OncoLink] years ago," Rustgi added. Last year, NCCRA's campaign was fraught with confusion -- a problem that Steve Telliano, Couric's spokesman, said will be fixed this year. "Last year, we had different [phone] numbers for different purposes," Telliano said. "We weren't able to house everything in one place." "This year," Telliano added, "we put them all together into one." The Cancer Center's phone bank, according to a statement from Marcus, will disseminate information about colon cancer and "enter caller information into a computerized registry that matches callers to prevention trials." "This year, [the campaign] will primarily be an update [to last year's efforts]," said Robert Wilson, a spokesman for the Entertainment Industry Foundation, which sponsors the NCCRA. "The campaign will show how the public can get information and support the cause locally." Wilson said that Today will be devoting a large segment to the NCCRA campaign. Last year, Couric's report was broken up into five days worth of coverage. Rustgi stressed the importance of preventing colon cancer, a disease that claimed approximately 57,000 lives out of 156,000 cases in 1999. "As a result of the media attention [last year], there's been a huge increase in the people who are being screened for colon cancer," Rustgi said, emphasizing that early detection is the key to prevention. According to the NCCRA, over 90 percent of colorectal cancer cases can be cured when detected early. During last year's campaign, Couric stressed the importance of early cancer detection by undergoing a colonoscopy on the air. A goal for the NCCRA this year is to "fill all clinical trials," according to Telliano. "We felt there was a need to set up a research clearinghouse," Telliano said. Marcus, who has already signed up volunteers, estimated that she will need 20 per day. "There are some from the outside, some from [Penn]," she said. "I get a few people every day, but gosh, I need more."