NC Restarts Scaled-Back Healthy Opportunities Pilot in January
North Carolina's Healthy Opportunities Pilot, which used Medicaid funds to address housing, food, transportation and other non-medical needs, will restart in January after an 18-month suspension, state health officials told regional partners. The relaunched program will offer only one of its nearly 30 former services: grocery box deliveries, and will be far more restrictive, limiting eligibility to food-insecure Medicaid beneficiaries who are pregnant or have diabetes or cardiovascular disease. The state budget allocated $25 million in nonrecurring funds, about a tenth of the $80 million regional partners said was needed to operate at full scale. The program originally launched in 2022 under a federally approved waiver and had served more than 30,000 people across 33 counties before legislators failed to renew funding and services halted in July 2025.