Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology in the United States in 2025: Finding Its Place in the Oncology World Part 2 of 2.

Abstract

In 2015, this core of authors wrote a "state of the union" overview of AYA oncology care at the time titled "Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Oncology in the United States: A Specialty in Its Late Adolescence." Since then, the landscape of cancer care in this unique population has changed, with encouraging improvement in some areas and persistent challenges in others. Ten years later, we have decided to update our review to demonstrate how far we have come in caring for 15 to 39-year-olds with cancer in the United States and how much further we need to go to truly improve both their short and long-term outcomes. Back in 2015, we described the field as in its late adolescence, still trying to define itself. With this 2-part review, we hope to demonstrate that as a subspecialty, it has grown up but is still trying to firmly establish its place in the larger world of oncology, much like a young adult that has moved away from home and is establishing its own identity in a changing world. In the first part of our update on the state of adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology in the United States in 2025, we reviewed the epidemiology of AYA cancers (those in 15 to 39-year-olds) as well as the advancements in the management of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and sarcomas in this population. In this second part, we review the topics of clinical trial enrollment, models of care, the psychosocial impact of cancer in this population and survivorship.