State Medicaid agencies and public health departments increasingly find value in collaborating to advance shared population health goals. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the critical need for robust cross-agency collaboration, particularly in leveraging and combining the strengths of each entity to best serve the health care needs of state residents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 6|18 Initiative offers a practical framework to guide Medicaid-public health collaboration to prevent and/or control six high-burden, high-cost health conditions, including type 2 diabetes. This brief shares lessons from three states participating in the CDC’s 6|18 Initiative — Kentucky, Michigan, and Virginia — that pursued cross-agency strategies to expand the National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) to prevent and/or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.