Throughout the life span, the health effects of social and behavioral factors such as smoking, drinking, physical activity, and diet have been dramatically demonstrated. These behaviors have implications for a wide array of health outcomes for both women and men, including cancer, infectious and allergic diseases, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, depression, periodontal diseases, obesity, and kidney diseases, as well as related outcomes such as mood and affect, functional impairment, disability, quality of life, and health care utilization. Behavior change, therefore, is critical to the prevention, management, and treatment of many important health conditions.
However, the initiation and maintenance of behavior change can be very difficult, and even those interventions that succeed in controlled clinical trials do not always scale well. It is not enough for behavioral and social scientists to do rigorous research and develop effective interventions; there must also be delivery channels and systems in place to disseminate these interventions to the public, policymakers, and other decision makers to ensure that they are implemented, adopted, and maintained.
In 2003, the Health Maintenance Consortium (HMC) was formed via a five-year research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has been coordinated by the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), The common goal of the HMC has been to understand the long-term maintenance of behavior change as well as effective strategies for achieving sustainable health promotion and disease prevention activities. The work of the Consortium has brought together experts in the behavioral health field who have helped identify and discuss various theories and methodologies related to the processes of behavior change. More information is available at: http://hmcrc.srph.tamhsc.edu/default.aspx.
Descriptions of funded research
If you are interested in identifying research funded by NIH in this topic area, explore the NIH CRISP database at http://crisp.cit.nih.gov. In order to optimize the search strategy, since no single CRISP search term exists for long-term behavior change, utilization of the combined terms behavior, maintenance, and human can provide an appropriate start for your search .
Research Opportunities
OBSSR has no current funding announcements focused specifically on the maintenance of behavior change. However, applicants interested in submitting a grant application may follow this link to a listing of announcements for unsolicited announcements: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm
Roadmap Transformative R01 Program RFA-RM-08-029 (R01)
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-08-029.html
Release/Posted Date: September 9, 2008
Opening Date: December 29, 2008 (Earliest date an application may be submitted to Grants.gov)
Letters of Intent Receipt Date(s): December 29, 2008
Application Due Date(s): January 29, 2009
Peer Review Date(s): May/June 2009
Council Review Date(s): August 2009
Earliest Anticipated Start Date(s): September 1, 2009
One of the areas of highlighted need, identified through an NIH strategic planning process, is:
Understanding and Facilitating Human Behavior Change
Behavior change is critical to the prevention, management, and treatment of many important health conditions. However, the initiation and maintenance of behavior change can be very difficult, and even those interventions that succeed in controlled clinical trials do not always scale well. Transformative advances in the science of behavior change, especially those that can unify disease-specific efforts, are urgently needed. In response to this challenge, the T-R01 program invites proposals from investigators and interdisciplinary teams working to understand basic mechanisms of behavior change at the biological, behavioral and social levels and developing innovative approaches to intervention. Questions of particular interest include how the interaction between neural, biological, behavioral, psychological, and social factors result in initial and sustained behavior change (possibly best understood via trans-disciplinary approaches including neuro- and behavioral economics, affective neuroscience, and approaches that focus on “will power” or behavior regulation). Highly responsive applications may also propose the use of new technologies and/or consider the broader context in which individuals live to understand basic mechanisms of behavior change common to multiple health conditions.
The Transformative Research Projects Program: A major goal of the NIH is to foster bold and creative investigator-initiated research. While R01 grants support the bulk of mainstream NIH investigator-initiated efforts, the Transformative Research Projects Program (T-R01) is designed to provide a more flexible and engaging avenue for support of investigators testing novel concepts and truly transformative ideas. The primary objective of the T-R01 initiative is to create a program that is specifically designed to support exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research with the potential to create new or challenge existing scientific paradigms. The T-R01 program is a High Risk/High Reward Demonstration Project supported by the NIH Common Fund, in which novel approaches to peer review and program management will also be piloted. Applicants to this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) must clearly articulate (1) the fundamental issue to be addressed and its overarching importance to the biomedical/behavioral research enterprise, (2) how the studies will either establish new or disrupt existing paradigms, and (3) how the proposed rationale and/or approaches significantly differ from state of the art in the field. The goal of the Transformative Research Projects Program is to provide support for individual scientists or collaborative investigative teams who propose transformative approaches to major contemporary challenges. To be considered transformative, projects must have the potential to create or overturn fundamental scientific paradigms through the use of new and novel approaches. Successful projects will be expected to have a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research. Consistent with this highly transformative focus, projects supported under the T-R01 program will reflect ideas substantially different from mainstream concepts being pursued in the investigator’s laboratory or elsewhere.
NOTICE: Applications submitted in response to this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for Federal assistance must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov (http://www.grants.gov) using the SF424 Research and Related (R&R) forms and the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.
APPLICATIONS MAY NOT BE SUBMITTED IN PAPER FORMAT.
Queries can be directed to:
Kristin M. Abraham, Ph.D. , Division of Strategic Coordination -OPASI
Office of the Director, NIH, 1 Center Drive, MSC 0189
Building 1, Room 255, Bethesda, MD 20892-0189
Telephone: (301) 594-8190, Fax: (301) 435-7268
Email: T_R01@mail.nih.gov
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