Make America Healthy Again: Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-based Approaches Through Evidence (“MAHA ELEVATE”)

The CMS Innovation Center is announcing a new NOFO for MAHA ELEVATE. This voluntary, three-year service delivery model is designed to test evidence-based, whole-person functional and lifestyle medicine (whole-person FLM) approaches to care.

MAHA ELEVATE will enable small scale tests of the feasibility, impact, and scalability of new interventions in an Original Medicare population. It will provide critical data to inform new coverage determinations or a potential future full-scale model that integrates such services into Original Medicare. Given the limited evidence that currently exists for whole-person functional and lifestyle medicine in the Original Medicare population, MAHA ELEVATE aims to strengthen the evidence base through testing innovative health care approaches developed and implemented by a variety of health care organizations nationwide.

Original Medicare beneficiaries. Applicants will identify the chronic condition they wish to address in the Original Medicare population (also known as Medicare and Medicare Fee-For-Service or FFS). Chronic conditions may range from those requiring ongoing treatment and evaluation to complications or conditions that place a person at low or medium complexity or level of need. This could be a specific diagnosis or a set of persistent, troubling symptoms that have not yet been diagnosed. They may choose to address a set of diagnoses, such as metabolic disorders. They may include people who are at risk of developing the chronic condition but haven't yet, and they may determine other inclusion or exclusion criteria.

Funds may be used to support whole-person functional and lifestyle medicine activities not currently covered by Original Medicare. Funds may be used for personnel costs and for reporting data to CMS.

Restrictions CMS does not allow the following costs: meals or food, controlled substances for substance abuse prevention, laboratory tests conducted in laboratories that do not have CMS Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification, services that are covered by Medicare FFS and can be billed as a claim, services provided to a person who is not enrolled in Original Medicare, paying the salary or expenses of any persons outside a recognized executive-legislative relationship or lobbying.

See criteria specified in the NOFO.

All qualified applications will be forwarded to a merit review committee. The results of the merit review of the applications by qualified experts will be used to advise the CMS approving official. In making these decisions, the CMS approving official will take into consideration: recommendations of the review panel; the readiness of the applicant to conduct the work required; the scope of overall projected impact on the aims; reviews for programmatic and grants management compliance; the reasonableness of the estimated cost to the government and anticipated results; and the likelihood that the proposed project will result in the benefits expected. Notification is made in writing by a Notice of Award (NoA).

To establish commitment, we require a letter of intent (LOI) from interested organizations by Friday, March 27, 2026 ahead of the application deadline (Tuesday, April 28, 2026). These dates are subject to change pending the actual publication date of the NOFO.

60 days