Cancer is becoming increasingly common among young people, with cases slowly and steadily rising every year for the past decade. And what type of insurance adolescents and young adults have affects at what stage of cancer they’re diagnosed and how long they survive.
As researchers who study cancer disparities in young adults, we examine the social and systemic factors that shape who survives a cancer diagnosis. In our recent review of the scientific literature – an analysis that included nearly 470,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 39 who had been diagnosed with cancer – we found that insurance status is one of the clearest and most consequential factors.
