The Pulse: Cancer Is Getting Younger and More Female. What’s the Path Forward?

Screening, therapeutics, and fertility are converging into a new paradigm in oncology care.

Cancer mortality in the U.S. has declined by 34% between 1991 and 2023, preventing an estimated 4.8 million deaths. And yet, adults under 50 are facing cancer diagnoses at an increasingly alarming rate.

Women, in particular, are bearing the brunt of that rise.

“In that under 50 population, it's not equal,” Karen Knudsen, the CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, tells HLTH in an interview for The Pulse. “If you take out the pediatric population and you define a young adult age 15 to 39, that's 88,000 new diagnoses this year alone. That's a lot of people.”

“That was really not expected, and something, frankly, that we still don't really understand,” says Knudsen of the overall rising rates in young adults. “The leading hypotheses are all associated with early exposures. So, is it microplastics? Is it ultra-processed food? Is it pesticides? Is it a helicopter of all of those things plus something else? We know that there must be a ‘something else’ because this change in incidence is particular to that under 50 population.” 

hlth., Alexa Mikhail, Content Lead, Senior Health Writer, September 1, 2026