What 2025 Taught Us And Why 2026 Matters More Than Ever - by Mariana Arnaut

Our team and their families at our annual gathering

Every year, around this time, I try to pause, reflect, and plan. I was never a “New Year’s resolutions” person, but as a CEO, I care deeply about alignment. Beyond creating a North Star to guide my team, the harder task was answering this question: Did the work we did actually matter to the people we say we’re here for?

In 2025, my answer to that question is yes. Not because everything was easy. It wasn’t. Not because everything worked perfectly. It didn’t. But because we stayed close to the people who trusted us with one of the most vulnerable chapters of their lives.

In 2025, The After Cancer became more real, more tangible, more alive.

In September, we launched our new app. It wasn’t just a product release — it was a step toward something I’ve believed for a long time: survivorship support has to be continuous, not episodic. It has to live with people - not sit in a binder they never open, or be reduced to a one-off visit.

Over the year, at The After Cancer, we:

• Offered 28 different modalities of support, recognizing that healing is never one-dimensional

• Delivered 479 hours of group sessions

• Worked with 19 experts who brought depth, rigor, and humanity to our programming

• Published 171 new articles, because information — when it’s accessible and compassionate — is a form of care.

Behind each number is a survivor. Someone trying to sleep again. Someone learning to trust their body. Someone realizing they weren’t “failing at survivorship” — they just weren’t being supported.

As we move toward 2026, one thing needs to become clear to everyone involved in cancer care: treating cancer is just the beginning. Survivorship is a phase of care that deserves intention, structure, and respect.

For decades, survivorship was treated as an afterthought. Treatment ended, and people were expected to be grateful, resilient, and “back to normal.” Many felt none of those things and often felt ashamed or guilty for it.

What we’ve learned is this: survivorship care doesn’t fail because clinicians don’t care. It fails because the system isn’t designed to support people long term.

We built our product intentionally to support survivorship on both sides of the system: survivors and the clinical teams who care for them.

Health and well-being are multidimensional, and long-term survivorship care can’t depend solely on clinical time. That reality shaped how we designed The After Cancer platform — as an ongoing support tool that lives alongside clinical care, not instead of it.

For care teams, our platform makes it possible to support large survivor populations in a sustainable way. The app supports survivors between visits by providing education, tools, and ongoing guidance, while reducing the day-to-day burden on clinicians and care teams.

For survivors, that same infrastructure creates space for connection and belonging. Group sessions, shared stories, and expert-led conversations help them feel less alone at a time that is often quietly overwhelming. Most importantly, we help survivors feel better and improve their quality of life.

As I reflect on the past year and what’s to come, I don’t believe survivorship has been “solved” but it is no longer invisible. What started as a response to a deeply personal problem has grown into something bigger than me, and even bigger than our team. The work is far from finished, but the foundation is here.

Survivorship now has a platform, a voice, and a future. I’m deeply proud of what we’ve built together to shape what comes after cancer.