The American Cancer Society (ACS) has shared its annual report on cancer facts and trends in the United States, and it shows, among other things, that younger women are seriously outpacing their male peers in new cancer diagnoses.

Cancer Statistics, 2025, was recently published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. It showed that between 1991 and 2022, cancer mortality decreased by 34%, which means about 4.5 million lives were saved. However, despite overall mortality being down, death rates are increasing for cancers of the oral cavity, uterine corpus, liver (in women), and the pancreas. The report notes that the five-year survival rate is just 8% in nine out of ten people diagnosed with pancreatic exocrine cancers.

There were also concerning trends among younger women. Women between the ages of 50 and 64 now have higher cancer rates than their male peers, while women under 50 have an 82% higher incidence rate than men their age. In 2002, it was only a 51% difference. Lung cancer rates are higher in women under 65 than in men under 65, as well.

There are increasing rates of cancers of the breast, prostate, and uterine corpus, as well as HPV-associated oral cancers. Liver cancer and melanoma in women are up, as well, as is cervical cancer in women between the ages of 30 and 44. Colorectal cancer cases continue to rise in under 65s, too.

Rebecca Siegel, the paper’s lead author and senior scientific director of surveillance research at ACS, says, “Continued reductions in cancer mortality because of drops in smoking, better treatment, and earlier detection is certainly great news. However, this progress is tempered by rising incidence in young and middle-aged women, who are often the family caregivers, and a shifting cancer burden from men to women, harkening back to the early 1900s when cancer was more common in women.”

There were other disparities highlighted by the report. Those include that Native Americans are two to three times more likely to get kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers than their white counterparts. Meanwhile, Black people are twice as likely to die from prostate, stomach, and uterine corpus cancers than white people, as well as 50% more likely to die from cervical cancer. 

Another demographic seeing cancer increases is youth between the ages of 15 and 19. 

It’s estimated that in 2025, there will be just under 2,042,000 new cancer cases in the U.S., along with just over 618,000 deaths.

ACS says these findings point to some areas that need to be worked on.

Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, interim CEO at the American Cancer Society, says, “This report underscores the need to increase investment in both cancer treatment and care, including equitable screening programs, especially for underserved groups of patients and survivors. Screening programs are a critical component of early detection, and expanding access to these services will save countless lives. We also must address these shifts in cancer incidence, mainly among women. A concerted effort between healthcare providers, policymakers and communities needs to be prioritized to assess where and why mortality rates are rising.”

You can read the whole report here.