Linked to the intake of salted, smoked, and pickled foods and infection with the H. pylori bacterium, stomach cancer was the most common form of cancer in the world in the 1970s and early 1980s. Today, although it has been declining in both incidence and mortality for several decades in most areas of the world, stomach cancer remains second only to lung cancer in incidence world-wide. Rates of cancer of the esophagus, by contrast, have risen markedly in the past several decades.

The National Cancer Institute has planned a Stomach Cancer/Esophageal Cancer Progress Review Group (PRG) to identify research priorities and resource needs for progress against these cancers. The report was released in December 2002.