Healthy Habits: Timing for Developing Sustainable Healthy Behaviors in Children and Adolescents

The sponsors invite applications that employ innovative research to identify mechanisms of influence and/or promote positive sustainable health behavior(s) in children and youth (birth to age 21). Positive health behaviors may include: developing healthy sleep patterns, developing effective self-regulation strategies, adaptive decision-making in risk situations, practicing proper dental hygiene, eating a balanced and nutritious diet, engaging in age-appropriate physical activity and/or participating in healthy relationships. Applications to promote positive health behavior(s) should target social and cultural factors, including, but not limited to: schools, families, communities, population, food industry, age-appropriate learning tools and games, social media, social networking, technology and mass media. Topics to be addressed in this announcement include: effective, sustainable processes for influencing young people to make healthy behavior choices; identification of the appropriate stage of influence for learning sustainable lifelong health behaviors; the role of technology and new media in promoting healthy behavior; identification of factors that support healthy behavior development in vulnerable populations, identification of barriers to healthy behaviors;  and, identification of mechanisms and mediators that are common to the development of a range of habitual health behaviors. Given the many factors involved in developing sustainable health behaviors, applications from multidisciplinary teams are strongly encouraged. The ultimate goal of this FOA is to promote research that identifies and enhances processes that promote sustainable positive behavior or changes social and cultural norms that influence health and future health behaviors.