Cancer disparities cost lives, and researchers are struggling to understand what lies behind these gaps. Federal funding for this type of work has slowed since last year. Andrew Brookes/Image source/Getty Images hide title toggle title Andrew Brookes/Image source/Getty Images Why are some people more likely to get cancer and die from it than others? Rural
Cancer disparities cost lives, and researchers are struggling to understand what lies behind these gaps. Federal funding for this type of work has slowed since last year.
Andrew Brookes/Image source/Getty Images
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Why are some people more likely to get cancer and die from it than others? Rural Americans, for example, are 18% more likely to die from cancer overall, and black women are 35% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. This is according to a recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
Cancer disparity researchers study these gaps and how to close them. Their work has contributed to reducing many disparities.
But the AACR report found that federal policy changes have affected about 93% of researchers surveyed in this field.
“Many medical trials stopped midway, meaning those patients suddenly didn’t receive the treatments they were receiving because funding stopped,” says Mariana Stern, professor of preventive medicine and urology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and chair of the report committee.
The report is based on a survey of 122 researchers, including teachers, scientists and students. Seventy-eight percent said they had been unable to apply for funding and 59 percent said ongoing research projects were disrupted. And 59% of respondents said the funding they missed came from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.
The report also points to data published in JAMA Oncology in November showing that in approximately the first half of 2025, the Trump administration canceled 181 grants from the National Cancer Institute, or NCI, a division of the NIH. The grants totaled more than $317 million, and many studied disparities.
In total, thousands of grants at the NIH were canceled in 2025, according to a nonprofit called Grant Witness that tracks cancellations and other changes in grant funding for scientific agencies. These funding cuts followed a January 2025 executive order calling for an end to “radical” and “wasteful” DEI research.
Heather Pierce, senior director of science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), described the funding cutoff as a mass termination “simply for not advancing the priorities of a new administration.” It says that under previous administrations “termination was reserved as a very extreme remedy” and that the scale was unprecedented.
While many canceled NIH grants were restored after several court cases fighting the change, there have been other cancellations since then, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees the NIH. And fewer new grants from the Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities have been awarded this year than in previous years.
There have been other disruptions with grant funding. Pierce says there has been a “continuing slowdown this year” in grant making and renewal.
Some researchers in the field are alarmed by the slowdown in funding and worry that by hampering their ability to do their work, it will translate into worse outcomes for patients.
“If we take our foot off the pedal on disparities research, there will be more Americans, in rural and other non-near communities [centers of excellence] — who won’t do well,” says Dr. Robert Winn, director of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Pennsylvania, who was not an author of the 2026 report but whose work is discussed in it.
In response to questions about cuts to cancer disparities funding, the NIH said in a statement: “NCI identifies cancer disparities research as a priority and recognizes that advances in the field generate knowledge that benefits all patients across the cancer spectrum, from prevention and early detection to treatment and survivorship.”
“Completely unprecedented”
Scarlett Lin Gomez, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, says the Bay Area Cancer Registry, which she directs, has received funding from the NCI for the past 53 years.
“We received a cut that was unprecedented in the years that my registry has been funded through the NCI. We have not had any cuts of this magnitude, not even close to it,” Gómez says.
Gómez runs a laboratory of approximately 50 people. Gomez says he had to lay off about seven full-time employees last year and expects to have to lay off five or six more this year.
“It literally keeps me up at night: the impacts on the people in my lab,” Gómez says. “I am listening to colleagues over the last few months [that] “Everyone is thinking about doing the same thing… It’s scary to even think about what that will be like and what the impact will be.”
Winn agrees: “It’s been disruptive. It’s forced people to be creative to keep things going.”
Stern, who researches cancer epidemiology, personally had to rethink some of his work to comply with regulations and continue funding. In some cases, it simply rephrased funding requests. In other cases, the focus of the project had to change.
Stern had previously obtained federal grants for training and professional development for racial and ethnic minority students to help them enter medical school or pursue research. This is important, he says, to “overcome the structural reasons why minorities are underrepresented” in medicine.
“Data shows that patients do better when they are treated by people who look like them, speak their language, and understand their culture, and research moves faster when teams are diverse and include members of the communities they are trying to understand,” Stern says.
But, he says, researchers had to change focus under Trump’s executive orders: “We are no longer allowed to have programs that target racial and ethnic minorities exclusively.”
“When you look at the percentage of doctors or medical graduates who are from racial and ethnic minority communities, you see an underrepresentation,” he says. “We still have a way to go, but with the current political climate, right now, it’s impossible to do that.”
Address the gaps
The AACR report highlights that progress has been made on cancer disparities and that current gaps are narrower than a generation ago.
For example, Stern says that “the black community has historically had much higher cancer incidence and mortality rates compared to the white population.” That gap has narrowed from about 34% higher in the 1990s to 9% higher today.
According to the report, research into cancer disparities contributed to this progress.
“If we do not continue to support research and clinical care, all the progress we have made over the past 30 years and all the progress to come is literally at risk,” Winn says. “That keeps me up at night.”
Many disparities remain. The report finds that veterans face a 72% greater chance of suffering from skin cancer and rural Americans are 18% more likely to die from cancer overall, including a 36% greater chance of lung cancer.
The report calls these disparities “one of the deepest forms of inequality and injustice.”
“It’s an injustice,” Gómez says, “and we understand that many of these disparities can be avoided.”
And medical disparities cost American society about $451 billion a year, Stern says, citing a 2023 study published in JAMwhich estimated medical costs and the value of productive years of life lost, estimated at $100,000 per year.
Cancer disparities research, Gomez says, informs not only gaps in outcomes and care among everyone in the U.S., but also the effect of individual and biological differences, providing a clue for scientists to better diagnose and treat cancer.
“Without both lines of evidence… we simply have no way to intervene,” Gomez says.
Winn led a program studying cancer disparities when he was director of the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. The program partnered with the Chickahominy Tribe to assess the burden of cancer in rural Virginia, identify potential environmental factors, and implement culturally tailored cancer care.
“We did water tests and had interesting findings,” Winn says. But most importantly, he says, “we were building trust because we were creating access to care.”
Winn says everyone should care about cancer disparities research because it could mean life or death for a disease that can happen to anyone.
“Cancer doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, if you’re from the south side of Chicago or the east end of Richmond,” he says. “He doesn’t care.”
Researchers also worry about the impact funding cuts will have on the next generation of doctors and scientists.
“The studies we do don’t just provide data: they contribute to training and workforce development, so that all ends when the funding ends,” Stern says.
Stern says more and more of his students are hesitant to enter academia.
Gomez agrees. “We are definitely seeing an academic brain drain, and this current environment will certainly further accelerate that,” he says.
“Please don’t stop the research,” says Chickahominy citizen and cancer survivor Melanie Stewart. “Everyone deserves health care.”
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