Testing Interventions for Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (R01 - Clinical Trial Optional)

Overview

<p>The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to fund highly innovative and promising research that tests multi-level physical activity intervention programs acting on at least two levels of the socio-ecological model and designed to increase health-enhancing physical activity: 1) in persons or groups that can benefit from such activity; and 2) that could be made scalable and sustainable for broad use across the nation. Current evidence indicates that interventions provided simultaneously at several levels across the Socio-Ecological Model are most likely to be successful in achieving increases in physical activity. The socioecological model of behavior change provides a framework for understanding the interactive effects of factors that determine behaviors, including physical activity. There are five nested levels of the socioecological model: individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy. The individual level encompasses characteristics of an individual that influence behavior change; the interpersonal level includes formal and informal social networks; the organizational level includes organizations and social institutions; the community level refers to relationships among organizations and the built environment; and the policy level includes local, state, and national laws and policies that can impact individual behavior. <br>This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages innovative research to improve our understanding of how to increase and maintain health-enhancing physical activity using multi-level interventions. Applicants should use the Socio-Ecological Model as a framework and should test multi-level interventions targeting at least two levels of the model. Interventions to be tested should seek to increase participants' progression toward achieving the physical activity recommendation appropriate to the participants' health, abilities, and conditions. This FOA also seeks studies that address a wide range of population groups across the lifespan (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities, children, older adults, persons with medical conditions or addictive disorders, and persons with disabilities). Investigators are encouraged to build on prior research to refine evidence-based physical activity interventions and to make use of innovative partnerships within and across sectors as needed to design an intervention with the potential for broad use and to study the outcomes of the proposed intervention. For investigators that need sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations, or to pilot, refine, or combine interventions previously used in different settings or populations, please see the companion Exploratory/Developmental Phased Innovation (R21/R33) PAR-18-307 FOA.</p>