Cancer deaths are falling—but the systems to support life after treatment haven’t scaled.
Something remarkable is happening in cancer care and it deserves both celebration and urgency. Last week, the American Cancer Society released its 2026 Annual Statistics Report, and the headline is one we don’t hear often enough: progress is real. Cancer mortality in the U.S. continues to fall, and the report estimates millions of deaths have been averted since the early 1990s thanks to prevention, earlier detection, and better treatments. We’ve reached a milestone ~70% 5-year survival rate for all cancers combined (for diagnoses in 2015–2021).
But this success creates a new reality: more survivors, with more complex, ongoing needs
When survival improves, the number of people living with and beyond cancer grows and so does the responsibility of the healthcare system.
This is what we call the survivorship gap:
Survivors are living longer;
But survivorship support hasn’t scaled at the same pace and clinicians are already stretched;
Patients are left to navigate late and long-term effects, recurrence anxiety, sexual health, fatigue, pain, sleep problems, and lifestyle changes, largely on their own.
In other words, we’re winning more battles, but too many people are left without the roadmap for life after treatment.
What needs to change (without adding more burden to oncology teams)
If survivorship is now a “new normal”, survivorship care must become a standard layer of cancer care, not an optional add-on. At The After Cancer, we believe there are a few practical shifts that can close this gap:
1) Survivorship care must be structured and repeatable
Survivorship care can’t solely depend on provider availability time in the clinic that day. It needs programs, pathways, and consistent follow-up touchpoints that patients can use when they need it most.
2) Survivorship support must extend beyond the clinic visit
Most survivorship work happens at home: habits, symptoms, stress, relationships, sleep, movement, nutrition. A survivorship model that relies only on in-person visits will never scale to meet the growing survivor population.
3) Survivorship must focus on quality of life, not just surveillance
Surveillance matters. But for many survivors, day-to-day function is the difference between “alive” and “living well”.
The bottom line for all of us working in healthcare
The ACS report is a celebration of progress and a reminder that survivorship is now a public health priority. If 70% of people are surviving 5 years and beyond, survivorship care can’t remain the neglected chapter of cancer care. 
This is exactly why The After Cancer exists: to help survivors manage symptoms, reduce recurrence risk factors where possible, and rebuild quality of life through an evidence-based, integrative approach in a way that can scale.
How is your organization adapting to the growing survivorship population? What’s working and what’s still missing? Learn more about how The After Cancer impacts survivors by downloading our whitepaper, or you can talk to our team.