Every year on Father's Day, we celebrate the dads in our lives. But American men are, statistically, working against the odds.
According to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, women in the U.S. now outlive men by 4.9 years on average: 81.4 years for women versus 76.5 years for men as of 2024. And research from Harvard Chan School and UC San Francisco suggests the gap had widened to nearly six years at its recent peak.
Part of the problem is biological, but it's also behavioral. According to the CDC, women are 33% more likely to visit the doctor than men, and twice as likely to seek preventive care. In 13 of the 14 leading causes of death common to both sexes, men have a higher age-adjusted mortality rate than women, per a Georgetown University study cited by reinsurance firm RGA.
The good news is that research is catching up. Below, Kivo, a GxP-compliant document and process management platform for life sciences teams, looks at five diseases that disproportionately affect men and the clinical trials working to change their prognosis.
1. Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer in American men and the second leading cause of cancer death, behind only lung cancer. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. In 2024, an estimated 299,010 new cases were diagnosed and 35,250 men died from the disease.
Racial disparities make the picture bleaker for some men than others. Black men carry a disproportionate burden of both diagnoses and deaths, a fact that prompted the American Cancer Society to launch a dedicated National Prostate Cancer Roundtable in 2024.
On the trial front, a notable Phase 3 result emerged in late 2024. Candel Therapeutics announced that its viral immunotherapy CAN-2409 met its primary endpoint in a 745-patient trial of intermediate-to-high risk localized prostate cancer. Patients receiving CAN-2409 alongside standard radiation therapy saw a 30% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer recurrence or death. There has been no new treatment or significant change in the standard of care for localized, non-metastatic prostate cancer for over 20 years.
2. Cardiovascular Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in men in the United States, accounting for roughly 1one in 4four male deaths. And a landmark 2026 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association confirms that men do not simply get heart disease more often than women. They get it significantly earlier. Following more than 5,000 adults for over 30 years, researchers found that men developed cardiovascular disease on average seven years earlier than women, with risk beginning to diverge as early as age 35. Coronary heart disease drove the gap most dramatically. Men reached a 2% risk level a full 10 years ahead of women.
Yet young men are the demographic least likely to have regular preventive care visits, creating a window of missed opportunity precisely when early intervention could matter most.
Clinical research is working to close that gap earlier in the disease timeline. The VESALIUS-CV trial, presented at the 2025 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, demonstrated that evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor, significantly lowered first major cardiovascular events in high-risk adults who had not yet experienced a heart attack or stroke. Meanwhile, Mount Sinai's PRECAD trial, launched in fall 2024, is targeting young adults with subclinical atherosclerosis to test whether aggressive early risk factor control can prevent cardiovascular events later in life.
3. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)
ALS is 20% more common in men than women, according to the ALS Association, with men typically developing the disease at a younger age. Men get ALS at an average onset age of around 60, compared with 68 for women, per Duke Neurology. Men are more likely to present with limb-onset ALS, while women more commonly present with bulbar onset.
ALS remains one of medicine's most stubborn challenges. Median survival after diagnosis is two to five years. Only six FDA-approved medications exist. But the trial landscape in 2024 and 2025 showed signs of acceleration.
ALS Research News reported that after ALS R&D notched 28 new trial starts in 2023, the rate more than doubled to 60 in 2024. One standout development came in April 2024, when a patient received the first-ever antisense oligonucleotide treatment targeting CHCHD10 mutations in ALS, under the "Silence ALS" initiative, with disease progression reportedly slowing by more than 50%. Meanwhile, MediciNova closed enrollment in a Phase 2b/3 study of its dual-action small molecule MN-166, which targets neuroinflammation through a broader mechanism than most ALS candidates. The Sean M. Healey ALS Platform Trial at Mass General Brigham, which has enrolled more than 1,300 participants and evaluated seven drugs, has moved two promising candidates to the next phase of testing.
4. Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is not exclusively a disease of men, but men carry a specific and underappreciated disadvantage. They develop it earlier, and at lower body weights, than women. Research published in Diabetologia confirms that worldwide, an estimated 17.7 million more men than women have diabetes, and men are typically diagnosed at a younger age and lower body fat mass. A large study from the Scottish Diabetes Research Network found that the mean BMI at diabetes diagnosis in men was 31.83, compared to 33.69 in women, with the difference most marked at younger ages. Men, in other words, need to gain less weight than women to tip into a diabetic state.
The treatment landscape for Type 2 diabetes is one of the most active in medicine. GLP-1 receptor agonists have dominated recent years, and the pipeline beyond them is deep. The CORE-TIMI 72a and CORE2-TIMI 72b trials, presented at the 2025 AHA Scientific Sessions, showed that olezarsen markedly lowered triglycerides in patients with cardiometabolic disease, an important complication pathway in men with diabetes. With earlier onset and a longer cumulative exposure to elevated blood sugar, men with Type 2 diabetes face a longer runway of cardiovascular and organ complications: more reason, researchers argue, for earlier screening and earlier treatment initiation.
5. Testicular Cancer
Testicular cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men between the ages of 15 and 35, according to MD Anderson Cancer Center. It is, in relative terms, one of medicine's success stories. The five-year survival rate is approximately 95%, and some estimates put cure rates as high as 99% for localized disease, making it among the most treatable of all cancers.
But the success of treatment comes with long shadows. Research published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians documented elevated risks of second malignancies, including bladder, leukemia, and lung cancers, in survivors treated with platinum-based chemotherapy or radiation. Fertility is also a major concern. The 15-year fatherhood rate for a man aged 30 at diagnosis was significantly lower for testicular cancer patients than age-matched controls. Active clinical trials are focused on reducing the long-term toxicity of treatment, identifying surveillance strategies that can spare lower-risk patients from unnecessary chemotherapy, and understanding why incidence rates have been steadily climbing over the past century. Survivorship, not just survival, is the frontier.
The Research Is Moving
Across all five of these conditions, the story is the same. Men are at elevated risk, arrive late to care, and have historically been underserved by research that either excluded them from trials or simply did not prioritize male-specific disease mechanisms. That is changing. The volume of trials, the sophistication of the science, and the growing clinical recognition of sex-based differences in disease onset and progression all point toward a more targeted future for men's health research.
This Father's Day, the best gift for a father might be a simple conversation about getting checked.
