Three additional OppNet FY2011 RFAs are available to the public. At present, there are seven active OppNet funding opportunities. For brief descriptions and links to these RFAs released on August 17, please see below.
OppNet, NIH’s Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network, makes each of its funding opportunities available through one of its 24 member Institutes and Centers (ICs). Consequently, the NIH IC that makes each FOA/RFA available to the public is not necessarily the NIH Institute or Center that ultimately will manage a funded OppNet project. For more information about OppNet, visit http://oppnet.nih.gov. To register for OppNet’s free conference October 28-29, 2010, visit, http://oppnet.nih.gov/news-102810.asp
Basic mechanisms influencing behavioral maintenance (R01)
This OppNet FOA solicits (R01) research applications examining basic mechanisms of behavioral maintenance. The intent of this FOA is to advance research on basic processes and mechanisms involved in sustaining learned behavior over time and in the context of dynamic environmental influences and changing psychological and biological states. Maintenance of health behavior change is a critical problem in applied clinical research, and innovative strategies to address this problem require a better understanding of basic processes and mechanisms involved in long-term behavior maintenance. This FOA requests applications that will improve our understanding of how newly learned, effortful, and goal-directed behaviors transition to less effortful, automatic, and essentially non-goal-directed behaviors that are more easily maintained over time. A range of possible processes and mechanisms (e.g., neurobiological, cognitive, and environmental) may be proposed for study, and applicants are encouraged to study multiple mechanisms and their potential interactions. Regardless of mechanisms or processes of interest, however, applications should test how these mechanisms and processes facilitate or impede the transition from newly learned, effortful, and goal-directed behaviors to less effortful, automatic, and essentially non-goal-directed behaviors. A wide array of research proposals are potentially appropriate under this FOA, ranging from animal neurobehavioral models to human learning studies of social and environmental influences that facilitate or impede the transition to habitually maintained behaviors.
Development of comprehensive and conceptually-based measures of psychosocial stress (R21)
This OppNet FOA solicits Research Project Grant (R21) applications from institutions and organizations that propose to develop and validate conceptually-focused and comprehensive measures of psychosocial stress that can be applied across species and across the lifespan. Applicants submitting applications under this FOA are encouraged to incorporate variations in exposures, chronicity, environments (including toxicants and social environments), cognitions, and responses, as well as capture important factors for measuring stress in both humans and animals, in men and women, and across the lifespan. Such studies should demonstrate that the measures, coupled with appropriate bridges between laboratory and population-based designs, advance our understanding of the components of psychosocial stressors that are most relevant to disease, and provide comparability across studies.
Psychosocial stress and behavior: Integration of behavioral and physiological processes (R01)
This OppNet FOA solicits (R01) applications that propose to investigate the mechanistic pathways linking psychosocial stressors and behavior. This research will facilitate investigation of multiple and potentially bidirectional pathways underlying the link between psychosocial stressors and behaviors that may ultimately impact biological function, health, and disease. OppNet encourages applicants to use model systems and longitudinal approaches to design innovative and integrative studies to elucidate how psychological factors, social factors, and environments impact the processes by which stressors are coupled with and influenced by various behaviors. Applications examining moderating factors such as individual demographic (age, gender/sex, ethnicity) and psychological (vulnerabilities, resilience) differences, risk factors, early exposure, and environments (including toxicants) are desirable. This research will provide a deeper understanding of the psychological, environmental, and social processes that ultimately connect psychosocial stress to behaviors, physiological processes, health, and disease.
William N. Elwood, Ph.D.
301-402-0116
OppNet Facilitator
OppNet is NIH's
Register for our conference on October 28-29, 2010: http://oppnet.nih.gov/news-102810.asp
