The National Institute of Health (NIH) is seeking applications for program entitled "Healthy Habits: Timing for Developing Sustainable Healthy Behaviors in Children and Adolescents".

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), issued by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), is to encourage Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant (R21) applications that employ innovative research to identify mechanisms of influence and promote positive sustainable health behavior(s) in children and youth (birth to age 18).

Topics Areas

• Discovering effective, sustainable processes for influencing toddlers, children and youth to develop healthy behavior habits;
• Determining the optimal approaches (e.g., including new electronic technologies) to improve children's health-promoting decision-making;
• Determining at what ages health behaviors are learned, for how long they are malleable before becoming adopted as habitual health practices, and the most influential developmental periods to modify health behaviors;
• Identifying parental/provider interventions to influence the development of healthy habits in toddlers, children, and youth;
• Understanding how influences such as families, peers, and media, contribute to the learning and internalizing of sustainable health-promoting behaviors;
• Exploring how children and youth learn to make age-appropriate decisions about health behaviors;
• Understanding how children learn and sustain healthy habits during times of major family transition (e.g., divorce, family immigration);
• Understanding the role of technology, including games and social media, in promoting healthy behavior habits;
• Identifying processes for influencing children with disabilities to make healthy, sustainable behavior choices and behaviors;
• Identifying factors that support the development of healthy behavior habits in vulnerable populations;
• Determining the influence of complementary and alternative medicine approaches on developing and sustaining healthy behavior habits in children and youth;
• Identifying common core mechanisms for the development of a range of sustainable health behaviors;
• Determining what makes learning health behaviors transient versus sustainable;
• Understanding motivational influences for the development of health behaviors that are salient at various phases of a child's development;
• Identifying mediators and moderators of the development of habitual health behaviors;
• Identifying the role of health literacy in the development of habitual health behaviors;
• Utilizing imaging methodologies and other technologies to show brain behavior linkages in the development of healthy, sustainable behavior;
• Understanding the effects of social and cultural influences on the development of sustainable health behaviors.

Funding information

Application budgets are limited to $200,000 direct costs and must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.

Eligibility Criteria

• Small businesses
• Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
• Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
• Special district governments
• County governments
• Private institutions of higher education
• City or township governments
• Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
• For profit organizations other than small businesses
• Independent school districts
• Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)
• State governments
• Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
• Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities

How to Apply

Interested applicants must apply online via given website.

For more information, please visit Grants.gov.