The voluntary Make America Healthy Again: Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-based Approaches Through Evidence (MAHA-ELEVATE) Model aims to address chronic disease using whole-person-care approaches for original Medicare enrollees. It will launch in September 2026.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week announced it will provide $100 million to fund three-year cooperative agreements for up to 30 proposals that promote health and prevention for original Medicare beneficiaries.
The model will focus on nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, harmful substance avoidance, and social connection.
The new voluntary model is the first Innovation Center program to focus on proactive, holistic, patient-centered functional or lifestyle medicine approaches to support conventional care. It also is the second model that the agency has recently introduced for traditional Medicare. Earlier this month CMS unveiled a new voluntary care model, known as the Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model, that would focus on Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conductions, such as diabetes, who have limited access to technology-supported care to manage their conditions.
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Under MAHA-ELEVATE, participating providers will use evidence-based, whole-person care approaches, such as functional or lifestyle medical interventions currently not covered by original Medicare, to support the medical care patients receive. It will combine psychological, nutritional, and physical interventions along with self-care strategies to address the whole person rather than individual disease. CMS said these interventions may slow or prevent chronic disease, but more evidence is needed to better understand which interventions work best for older populations.
CMS said that the model will also gather and evaluate new data on cost and quality to inform future Medicare coverage determinations or potential future CMS Innovation Center models that will improve the health of Medicare beneficiaries and reduce spending in the program.
The agency will release a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) in early 2026 for the first cohort, and the voluntary model will launch on September 1, 2026.
Eligible applications include private medical practices; health systems and accountable care organizations; academic organizations; functional , lifestyle, preventive and integrative medicine centers; Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics; community-based organizations; state or local governments; Indian Health Service/Tribal Services/Urban Indian Programs; and senior living communities.
Proposals should include services not already covered by original Medicare but with documented evidence of the intervention’s efficacy. CMS said the cooperative agreements will be awarded to organizations with experience integrating and measuring the impact of such approaches to health and wellness, with scientifically documented improvements in health.
Awardees will work with CMS to create a plan for data collection, quality, measurement, recruitment, and cost containment.
All proposals must incorporate nutrition or physical activity as part of the design. Three awards will be reserved for interventions that address dementia.
Cooperative agreements will be awarded in two rounds for two separate cohorts—one starting in 2026 and the second in 2027.
Selected applicants must demonstrate that they or their partners are experienced in delivering these interventions and that the interventions are safe and effective for the target population and supported by peer-reviewed literature. They must also demonstrate experience with data collection or the ability to accurately collect and report data in a timely manner, with appropriate beneficiary safeguards.
MAHA ELEVATE recipients will select a chronic condition or conditions and identify the interventions they will offer to their Original Medicare patients.