The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has expressed support for two new models introduced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which aim to change how lifestyle medicine is practiced and reimbursed.
The first model, called Make America Healthy Again: Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-based Approaches Through Evidence (MAHA ELEVATE), was announced on December 11, 2025. This initiative will allocate about $100 million over three years to fund up to 30 proposals that promote health and prevention among Original Medicare beneficiaries. These proposals will use evidence-based approaches focused on whole-person care, including interventions in lifestyle medicine that are not currently covered by Original Medicare. The program will also collect data on cost and quality to help guide future efforts aimed at encouraging healthy behaviors and reducing spending within Original Medicare. CMS plans to release a Notice of Funding Opportunity in early 2026 for the first group of participants, with the voluntary program starting September 1, 2026. A second group is expected to begin one year later. Each participating organization may receive around $3 million over three years to gather information on their interventions.
"ACLM has been advocating for lifestyle medicine to be the foundation of health and all health care for over 20 years," said ACLM CEO Susan Benigas. "This action brings that vision closer to reality for our 15,000 clinician members, who are passionately working every day to bring the power of root-cause, lifestyle-first treatment to patients for the prevention, treatment, and even reversal of chronic disease. We applaud CMS for its leadership in bringing this long-awaited opportunity for hope and healing to the Medicare population through the ELEVATE model, introducing not only meaningful flexibility in care delivery, but also dedicated funding to support innovative, whole-person approaches that can truly transform outcomes."
Shortly before this announcement, on December 4th, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) revealed another new model named Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS). ACCESS is a voluntary payment system designed as a ten-year program that moves away from paying providers per procedure; instead it rewards them based on patient health improvements related to chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, musculoskeletal pain, and depression. Providers will connect patients with technology companies offering services addressing these conditions.
"ACCESS is one of the most lifestyle medicine-aligned, well-thought-out demonstration models ever designed, with a lot of flexibility to deliver care, offering options for patients and providers while NOT paying for encounters, but for outcomes," said ACLM President Padmaja Patel. "It requires real-time data sharing so that both patients and providers can make informed decisions about whom to partner with. We applaud CMMI for working toward outcomes-based solutions for lifestyle medicine reimbursement."
