For years, those of us working in cancer care have been making the clinical case for Exercise Medicine.
The evidence is there. We know medically prescribed exercise can help people manage the side effects of cancer treatment, maintain their physical function and independence, improve quality of life and, for some cancers, improve survival outcomes.
Yet despite that evidence, medically prescribed exercise is still not routinely embedded into cancer care for every Australian from the point of diagnosis.
Now, we have another compelling reason to ask why.
A new Deloitte Access Economics report has put a dollar value on something the evidence has been telling us for years: Exercise Medicine in cancer care isn’t simply good healthcare. It’s a smart economic investment.
For every $1 invested in exercise physiology for people with cancer, Deloitte estimates a $3 economic benefit. That’s a 200 per cent net return over three years – the strongest return of the six major health conditions examined.
In almost any other sector, we’d look at a return like that and ask: how quickly can we invest?
In cancer care, we’re still debating whether we can afford to fund it.
Perhaps part of the problem is that the return on Exercise Medicine isn’t always immediately visible.
It doesn’t arrive as a cheque at the end of the financial year.
It looks like the hospital admission that never happened. The emergency presentation that was avoided. The person who was able to remain at work. The parent who maintained enough strength and independence to continue participating in family life. The life that was extended, with better quality of life.
For cancer alone, the Deloitte modelling identified thousands of potentially avoidable hospital admissions and emergency presentations.
What I find particularly striking is that the modelling was based on just 22,000 people, around four per cent of Australians living with cancer.
Imagine what becomes possible if we start thinking at scale.
I’ve spent eight years watching the gap between evidence and access
I’m an oncology physiotherapist, and for the past eight years I’ve been working to bridge the gap between what the research tells us about exercise and what people actually experience when they’re diagnosed with cancer.
When someone hears the words “you have cancer”, there is understandably an enormous focus on what happens next.
Surgery. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Medication. But medically prescribed exercise should also be part of that conversation from the beginning.
This isn’t handing someone a generic exercise program or telling a person undergoing chemotherapy that they should “try to stay active”.
Exercise Medicine is individually prescribed around that person’s cancer diagnosis, treatment, symptoms, side effects, physical capacity and goals. What someone needs before surgery may be very different to what they need during chemotherapy, radiation or later in their cancer journey.
At Lift Cancer Care Services, we’ve built a multidisciplinary model around exactly that premise. Exercise should be integrated into cancer care from diagnosis and throughout treatment, not left as an optional extra patients have to discover for themselves.
I’ve watched what happens when we get this right. I’ve seen people maintain their strength and independence through extraordinarily difficult treatment. I’ve seen people continue working. I’ve seen parents retain enough physical capacity to keep participating in their children’s lives.
But I’ve also met far too many people who only discovered Exercise Oncology through chance, because somebody happened to tell them about it. And that’s the part I struggle to accept.
More recently, as our work at Lift has received greater public attention, we’ve started fielding calls and enquiries from people interstate asking the same question:
“How can I access this where I live?”
It’s a question I wish I had a better answer to.
Because access to Exercise Medicine shouldn’t depend on where you live, whether you’ve happened to hear about it, or whether there happens to be a service nearby that understands how to safely integrate exercise into cancer treatment.
To me, those enquiries are another sign that the challenge is no longer simply convincing patients of the value.
It’s building a health system capable of giving them access to it.
Australia has been talking about the evidence supporting exercise in cancer care for years. The conversation now needs to evolve.
We need to talk about implementation.
How do we make referral to appropriately qualified exercise professionals a routine part of the cancer pathway? How do we fund it so access isn’t determined by someone’s postcode or financial circumstances? How do we build the specialist workforce required to deliver Exercise Medicine safely and effectively as demand grows? And how do we stop thinking about supportive cancer care simply as an expense rather than an investment?
Because the Deloitte findings give us an opportunity to think differently about what “return” actually means in healthcare.
When a person with cancer remains independent, there is value in that. Likewise if they avoid an emergency department presentation or hospital admission, or maintain their ability to work, care for their kids or participate in their community.
And when our already stretched healthcare system avoids preventable demand, there is very real economic value in that too.
The question in 2026 shouldn’t still be whether exercise has a place in cancer care, because we know it does.
The more important question is how we move from pockets of excellent practice to a system where every Australian diagnosed with cancer has access to appropriately prescribed Exercise Medicine as part of their care.
I don’t think we can afford not to.