Authors: Jamye Chapman, Center for Health Care Strategies

Medicaid Members’ experiences and perspectives can offer important insight, build trust between health care organizations and communities, and ultimately, make care more effective.

State-level efforts in community member and family engagement have been steadily growing in recent years. In 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a rule requiring states to establish or strengthen Beneficiary Advisory Councils (BACs) and to reconfigure existing Medical Care Advisory Committees as Medicaid Advisory Committees in order to ensure Medicaid member experience and input are integrated into the program and policy decision-making processes.

This guide, paired with the Community Member Engagement Landscape Assessment is designed to help state Medicaid agencies systematically document existing efforts to engage community members through mechanisms such as advisory boards and committees, patients’ groups, and other health-related organizations. The goal is to understand the existing landscape to design or strengthen BAC, or other member engagement advisory efforts, effectively.