Creating Text Style with Colors using Pandoc to Docx Converter

Question

I am creating a simple Word document (*.docx) using Pandoc. My input text file is fairly straight forward. I would like to create text with Red/Yellow/Green highlight. I am aware of creating a custom reference document and using that in Pandoc. In fact, I have a custom-reference.docx that I am using, but I am not sure how to add a Text Style for this Text Highlight Colors.

My Pandoc command

pandoc -s word_basics_pandoc.txt -o output.docx --reference-doc=custom-reference.docx

Output in docx, I am trying for

My Sample Text for creating Docx

---
title: Word report
author: John Doc
date: May 24, 2021
keywords: word,pandoc
---

This is a sample text document created using Pandoc.

# Text Style with either Text color (Text Highlight color)

Red
Yellow 
Green

## Lists

* one
* two
* three

## Ordered Lists

1. one
2. Two
3. Three