The 2026 State of Childhood Cancer in Chicagoland
There is a particular kind of silence that lives inside a children's hospital. You can hear it if you walk the pediatric oncology hallway at Advocate, Lurie, or Comer in the early morning. It is the sound of families doing the work the rest of the world does not see.
In 2026, that silence is heavier than it has been in years. The world outside the hospital is louder, harder, and more uncertain than it was a year ago. The political climate. The economy. The news cycle. Every family in this country is carrying more than they were before. And while the rest of us are negotiating those weights in our regular lives, somewhere in Chicagoland, another family is being told the word leukemia, or sarcoma, or neuroblastoma, for the first time.
The cancer does not pause for the rest of what is happening.
This is our Childhood Cancer Awareness Month snapshot. What Maxwell's Toy Box delivered in 2025, what we are watching in 2026, and what the families we serve are carrying right now.
By the numbers | 2025 IMPACT
5,197 children supported across four Chicagoland partner hospitals
8,573 toys and art supplies delivered
4,024 Joy Packages distributed during clinic, infusion, and inpatient days
$48,354.62 total direct program investment
$9,103 in direct gas and grocery assistance distributed through hospital social workers
6 counties served (Cook, Lake, DuPage, Will, Kane, McHenry), plus out-of-state families
100 percent volunteer-run. No salaries paid in 2025.
The landscape.
Every year, approximately 15,000 to 16,000 children in the United States are diagnosed with cancer. About 1,800 of them die. Childhood cancer remains the leading disease-related cause of death among children in this country.
Chicagoland is one of the country's most concentrated pediatric oncology treatment hubs. Maxwell's Toy Box works directly with four partner hospitals:
• Advocate Children's Hospital, Park Ridge
• Advocate Children's Hospital, Oak Lawn
• Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
• UChicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital
Between them, these four hospitals treat thousands of children with cancer across six counties (Cook, Lake, DuPage, Will, Kane, and McHenry) plus families who travel from neighboring states for complex and rare diagnoses.
The diagnoses our partner hospitals see most:
• Leukemia, approximately 29 percent
• Brain and central nervous system tumors, approximately 26 percent
• Lymphomas, approximately 11 percent
• Soft tissue sarcomas, approximately 7 percent
• Neuroblastoma, approximately 6 percent
• Wilms tumor, approximately 5 percent
• Bone cancers, approximately 4 percent
• Other rare pediatric cancers, approximately 12 percent
Every pediatric cancer diagnosis is a whole-family diagnosis. The siblings who spend Saturdays in waiting rooms. The parents who keep showing up to work because they cannot afford not to. The grandparents who become primary caregivers because the parents cannot be in two places at once.
The economic reality.
Childhood cancer is a financial event in addition to a medical one. The numbers families face look like this:
• 80 to 120 medical appointments in the first year after diagnosis.
• 20 to 40 percent average household income loss during active treatment.
• One in five children diagnosed with cancer lives in poverty at the time of diagnosis.
• Average lifetime cost of treating a child with cancer exceeds $833,000, not counting long-term survivorship care.
What those numbers translate to in practice:
A family driving three times a week to one of our four partner hospitals spends an average of $2,500 to $4,000 a year in transportation alone, depending on distance and parking situation. A family losing 30 percent of household income loses roughly $22,500 a year for a Chicagoland family at median household income. Co-pays, prescriptions, hospital food, and the small daily costs of being in a hospital regularly add several thousand dollars per year on top of that.
These are not edge cases. This is what an average childhood cancer family in our region carries, on top of everything else happening in the world.
What Maxwell's Toy Box delivered in 2025.
The work Maxwell's Toy Box does is divided across three programs. These are the audited 2025 totals.
Toys for Joy.
8,573 toys and art supplies delivered to the four partner hospitals. $25,903 invested in toy and art inventory across the year. These items are stocked in hospital toy closets and used by child life specialists during clinic visits, infusion appointments, inpatient stays, and procedures. Imaginative play for long inpatient stays. Sensory toys for clinic days. Arts and crafts between procedures.
Joy Packages.
4,024 Joy Packages distributed to children at our partner hospitals. $13,349 invested in Joy Package contents across the year. Each kit is sensory-centered, curated to help children cope with anxiety and overstimulation during long clinic, infusion, and treatment days. Every Joy Package is assembled by volunteers.
Direct Family Support.
$9,103 in direct gas and grocery assistance distributed to families across the four hospitals. $50 gas cards and $100 grocery gift cards, distributed exclusively through hospital social workers based on need. Programs also intentionally support siblings, because childhood cancer is a whole-family experience.
Together, these three programs reached 5,197 children at our four partner hospitals in 2025. Total direct program investment was $48,354.62. Maxwell's Toy Box remains one hundred percent volunteer-run. No salaries paid in 2025.
What is changing in 2026.
Three strategic shifts are underway this year. Each reflects what we are hearing from hospital partners and from the families we serve.
Direct Family Support is now our highest priority.
In 2025, direct family assistance accounted for 18 percent of program spending. In 2026, that allocation is rising to 40 percent. This is the largest single shift in MTB's program mix since the organization was founded, and it reflects a clear signal from hospital social workers: families need help earlier in treatment, before existing resources are exhausted. The cost of cancer has not changed dramatically year over year. The cost of everything else has.
Hospital partnership is expanding.
Maxwell's Toy Box is pursuing additional pediatric hospital partnerships in the Chicagoland region, with a target of six partner hospitals by the end of 2026. Each new partnership means consistent year-round access to toys, Joy Packages, and direct family support for hundreds of additional children in treatment.
Volunteer capacity is scaling.
Six to eight volunteer assembly days are planned for 2026, targeting approximately 1,700 Joy Packages assembled by volunteers across the year. Volunteer-led capacity is central to how MTB delivers consistent year-round support without paid staff.
Advocacy and the longer horizon.
In 2024 and 2025, Maxwell's Toy Box engaged with local and federal leaders to elevate the financial strain, access to care, and year-round support needs that families face during childhood cancer treatment. In February 2026, MTB participated in the Alliance for Childhood Cancer Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C.
A long-term goal in development is a future division focused on supporting childhood cancer research funding. This responds to what hospital partners and families have continued to raise: that direct service and research investment are connected, and that an organization grounded in the lived experience of treatment has standing to advocate for both.
What this report does not include.
We want to be clear about the limits of this snapshot.
It does not cover families being treated at Chicagoland hospitals outside our four current partners. It does not cover families navigating relapse or progression. It does not cover survivorship care, which is its own growing field with its own resource gaps. It does not cover families being treated outside Chicagoland who have ties to our region.
As hospital partnerships expand in 2026 and beyond, future versions of this report will widen.
How to use this report.
If you are a journalist.
The numbers in this report are available for use. We are happy to provide additional context, hospital partner introductions where appropriate, and family-level access where families have consented in advance to share their story. Contact our team at maxwellstoybox.com/contact.
If you are a donor or supporter.
The math behind every dollar is in this report. Fifty dollars in our hands becomes two weeks of transportation for a family driving to chemo. One hundred dollars becomes a week of groceries. A twenty-five dollar toy donation becomes the item in a child's hands during their next infusion. We track these dollars carefully because the families we serve cannot afford for us to be sloppy with them.
If you are a Chicagoland hospital partner.
Please continue to send referrals. The Family Support program operates on a no-questions-asked basis for the four partner hospitals. Your assessment of family need is sufficient.
If you are a family currently in treatment.
You are the reason this report exists. The numbers are an attempt to make the work visible. The work is for you.
On the record.
Maxwell's Toy Box NFP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-1719585, based in Lake Bluff, Illinois. The organization holds the Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest verification rating issued by Candid, a national organization that rates the financial and operational accountability of American nonprofits. Maxwell's Toy Box is one hundred percent volunteer-run.
2025 corporate partners included Whiting-Turner, Walmart, Diamond Residential Mortgage, and ISTO Advisors. Partnership inquiries for 2026 can be directed to maxwellstoybox.com.
This snapshot is published annually during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. The full 2025 Annual Report is available at maxwellstoybox.com.
Joy is medicine. Showing up is the whole thing.
The world is harder than it was a year ago. Childhood cancer is not pausing for that.
We are not pausing either.
Dina
Mom of Max | Founder, Maxwell’s Toy Shoppe
Childhood Cancer Advocate 💛
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