Dr. LaPook’s career sits at the intersection of medicine, media, and public health. As a physician and broadcast journalist, he has worked since the beginning of the pandemic to keep the public, as well as his own patients, informed about how to try to stay safe. Throughout his career in journalism, his wide-ranging interviews with patients, clinicians, researchers, public health officials, politicians, and others have helped him educate the public while providing him with his own continuing medical education.
Dr. LaPook has a special interest in using media and the arts to improve medical training. In 2014, he founded The Empathy Project, which produces short films and other educational materials to teach clinicians to be more effective by practicing empathy.
Since joining CBS News in 2006, Dr. LaPook has contributed more than 1,200 reports for “CBS Evening News,” “60 Minutes,” “CBS Mornings,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and “Face the Nation.” His 2012 segment on the national drug shortage, 2013 coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, and 2019 and 2020 contributions to “CBS Sunday Morning” have earned him four Emmy Awards. In 2018, two groundbreaking “60 Minutes” reports investigating the sexual abuse scandal involving USA Gymnastics led to a Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media and a George Foster Peabody Award nomination. In addition, he won two Edward R. Murrow awards for “Best Broadcast” in 2007 and 2013, and a 2015 New York Press Club Award for Journalism for the WCBS-AM News Team Special “Eye on Ebola.”
Jon LaPook was born in Mineola, New York. He graduated with honors from Yale University and received his M.D. in 1980 from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was elected into AOA, the national medical honor society. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in Gastroenterology and Medical Informatics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York City.
A resident of New York City, Dr. LaPook is married to writer and producer Kate Lear. They have two sons.
