Cancer screening. Vaccine wariness. Family doctors. Our watch list for health stories in 2026
CBC
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Last year, we set out a wide-ranging list of health stories to watch in 2025, from avian flu to vaccines to the strain on the Canadian health-care system. We covered all those, and plenty of others, including a new drug approval for post-partum depression and novel genetic therapies for rare diseases.
Here’s what’s on the CBC Health Unit’s watch list for 2026: New approaches to connecting people with family doctors, anticipated changes to cancer screening, misinformation and vaccine wariness, future uses for GLP-1 agonists (like Ozempic and Wegovy) and the morphing toxic drug crisis.
2025 was a year that saw old problems find new solutions. A new survey found almost six million Canadian adults still didn’t have a regular family doctor. Physicians, who were expected to manage the administrative as well as medical aspects of their practices, were burning out and leaving the profession.
However, one small city in British Columbia decided to take matters into its own hands. Colwood, just outside of Victoria, offered to make their doctors municipal employees. These doctors get a salary, a pension, and most of all, work/life balance.
The Colwood clinic opened earlier this year. Three doctors have been hired so far, with the goal of hiring five more by 2030. Word of the idea is spreading across the country, with municipalities, community health-care organizations and doctors all trying to replicate the same plan. It may not be something every family physician will embrace. But at a time when solutions are in short supply, thinking outside of the box can lead to breakthroughs.
— Marcy Cuttler
New cancer screening guidelines for Canadians are expected in 2026 and they’ll be coming from a newly revamped panel of experts.
The body that issues national cancer screening guidelines, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, is undergoing a major overhaul following an external review. The task force was created by the federal government.
Earlier this year, the federal health minister paused the task force’s work, after it received increasing scrutiny for continuing to recommend routine breast cancer screening start at 50 years old.
The guidance went against evidence that showed screening should start at 40 years of age.
This, along with years of mounting criticism against the panel for not taking expert advice, using outdated research and being too slow to update its guidelines, also led the federal health minister to launch a review.
The published review offered several recommendations that the task force is currently working on. It’s expected to reconvene in April 2026.
In an email to CBC News earlier this month, the Public Health Agency of Canada said once the panel is operational, it will then decide what health topic guidelines to prioritize.
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