Award-winning journalist, best-selling author, well-known cancer advocate and talk-show host Katie Couric will be the keynote speaker at Johns Hopkins Medicine's 19th annual A Woman's Journey symposium Nov. 16 in Baltimore. She also will receive the Johns Hopkins Medicine Distinguished Service Award for her commitment to building public awareness about colorectal cancer screening, raising funds for research to find better treatments for all cancers, and supporting patient care.
Image caption: Katie Couric
Image credit: katiecouric.com
Couric will speak about how cancer changed her life and led to a personal commitment to advocate for colon cancer screening and to raise badly needed funds for cancer research. Former co-anchor of the Today Show and now host of the syndicated daytime daily talk show Katie, she co-founded the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance with the Entertainment Industry Foundation in 2000, and also helped establish the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health, named for her late husband, at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical College. In 2008, Katie was one of nine co-founders of Stand Up To Cancer, an EIF initiative uniting Hollywood and the public in the effort to raise money for accelerated cancer research.
The New York Times best-selling author of The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives, she joined the Disney/ABC Television Group in summer 2011 and serves as special correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials.
The symposium is the creation of two women from Baltimore, Harriet Legum and Mollye Block, who together realized the need to provide women with a forum to gain knowledge about their health concerns. Since its founding in 1995, AWJ annually has offered 32 seminars—all taught by Johns Hopkins physicians and scientists. Women hear firsthand about advances in medicine from researchers in an array of medical specialties. The program is designed to attract mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters and friends who come to learn from Hopkins experts and from each other.
Nearly 1,000 women from more than a dozen states are expected to attend this year's conference. Presentations will cover new treatments and information on topics such as preserving memory, antioxidants, and strategies to prevent heart disease and cancer.
Registration for this year's AWJ symposium in Baltimore will open at 8:30 a.m., on July 1. The conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Hilton Baltimore. For more information, please visit http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/awomansjourney/baltimore/.
Posted in Health
Tagged cancer, women's health
