An official website of the United States government
Adherence and behavior maintenance for improved health promotion, disease prevention, and treatment outcomes
When beginning your next investigator-initiated application, consider the following NIH highlighted topic. The area of science described below is of interest to the listed NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs). This is not a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO).
Apply through an appropriate NIH Parent Funding Announcement or another broad NIH opportunity available on Grants.gov. Learn how to interpret and use Highlighted Topics.
Topic Description
Post Date: September 15, 2026
Expiration Date: September 15, 2028
Background
Poor adherence to recommended healthcare regimens and health behaviors is common across many chronic health conditions and populations. This includes recommendations and guidelines for prevention, screening, treatment, and monitoring--and encompasses health behaviors that include but are not limited to using medications, following dietary guidelines, keeping active through exercise, and maintaining engagement in care. Research in the behavioral and social sciences holds promise for identifying ways to increase behavioral adherence, improve outcomes for individual, family, community, and population health, and reduce healthcare costs.
The long-term maintenance of health behaviors is a critical public health challenge across behaviors and populations. Behavior maintenance involves consistently performing a newly established health behavior to specified criteria over time and across contexts. Maintaining health behaviors is a dynamic process in which people may cycle in and out of the behavior before reaching a regular practice and/or steady state, and the criteria for maintenance may be situational depending on the health outcome. Its dynamic nature underscores the importance of improved measurement and monitoring of health behaviors and associated determinants to prompt the timely delivery of support interventions when needed.
Research Objectives
This topic encourages research that addresses adherence to prevention and treatment recommendations and maintenance of behaviors to improve long-term health outcomes. Applications may address health behavior initiation, execution, and/or maintenance through mechanistic studies, efficacy trials, or implementation science research. Intervention research may target known determinants at one or more levels of ecologic influence, including the individual, care provider, family, healthcare provider, healthcare system, and community levels. Studies that aim to reduce health disparities and/or that include replication, reproducibility, and sustainability strategies are encouraged.
Projects may:
- Develop and/or evaluate multilevel and/or multicomponent intervention strategies designed to optimize adherence and behavior maintenance.
- Identify mechanisms of action (MoAs) that support behavior change to improve adherence and maintenance, or MoAs that are unique to adherence and maintenance.
- Advance novel approaches or improve implementation of existing approaches to monitor adherence and long-term behavior maintenance and facilitate delivery of timely interventions that promote health for all.
- Leverage tools and technologies, such as mobile health apps, mobile medical devices, and electronic health records, that allow assessments of health behaviors and dynamic changes in behaviors across time to promote long-term adherence and/or behavior maintenance
Participating ICOs
Sydney O'Connor
[email protected]
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) will support research examining how complementary and integrative interventions can improve adherence to recommended treatment and prevention regimens. Used alongside conventional medicine, these approaches have demonstrated potential to promote behavioral change and sustain long-term adherence (e.g., yoga for smoking cessation; mindfulness meditation to support adherence to medications for opioid use disorder). Consistent with a whole person health framework, NCCIH is interested in multicomponent interventions that operate across biological, behavioral, social, and environmental domains to support adherence-promoting behaviors and improve long-term health outcomes.
Peter Murray, PhD
[email protected]
NIA is interested in projects that leverage current understanding of behavioral science, psychology, and social and environmental contexts relevant to aging to promote adherence in self-management and caregiving. Areas include, but are not limited to:
- Interventions to promote adherence to medical and behavioral regimens in mid- to late life aimed at preventing age-related diseases and promoting healthy, adaptive aging.
- Adherence research on exercise, healthful eating, prescribed medications, stress-reducing and/or positive-affect-inducing behaviors, and medical regimens.
- Development of scalable, principle-driven interventions that are highly relevant to the needs and capacities of individuals as they age.
- Interventions that incorporate behavioral economic principles and/or technological innovations.
- Interventions to care for individuals living with chronic conditions.
- Interventions with a geriatric focus on multiple chronic conditions that may involve polypharmacy.
Erin Harrell, Ph.D.
[email protected]
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) supports research to improve health outcomes of evidence-based biomedical prevention and treatment interventions for infectious and immunologic diseases including evaluation of:
- Implementation and novel approaches to monitor adherence and long-term maintenance
- Effectiveness of digital and mobile interventions to improve dissemination and implementation to facilitate patient and community adherence
- Measures of adherence outcomes related to the effectiveness
Usha Sharma, PhD, MPH
[email protected]
NIDDK is interested in how adherence behavior impacts the prevention, treatment, and characterization of diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases, obesity, digestive and liver diseases, nutritional disorders, and kidney, urologic, and hematologic diseases.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Integration of multi-modal datasets, including metrics of treatment adherence and behavior change, to better characterize response heterogeneity across individuals and populations
- Implementation science research across multiple populations and settings to improve long-term adherence to prevention and treatment recommendations
- Projects that engage patients, community members, and other interested parties with unique insights into barriers and facilitators to adherence
- Integration of digital biomarkers with electronic health records to support clinical shared-decision making, optimize adherence to healthcare regimens, and/or enhance digital phenotyping capabilities
Theresa Teslovich Woo, PhD, Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases
[email protected]
Mary Evans, PhD, Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition
[email protected]
Jenna Norton, PhD, MPH, Division of Kidney, Urology, and Hematology
[email protected]
NIMH supports research on how, why, for whom, and under what conditions interventions improve service-user adherence to evidence-based mental health care or HIV screening, prevention, and treatment regimens. Adherence refers to the alignment between treatment components and patient behavior.
NIMH prioritizes studies that include objective measures of adherence and examine mechanisms of action and moderators to identify individuals at risk for nonadherence, enabling the development and targeted delivery of flexible interventions for those facing the greatest adherence challenges, including solutions-oriented approaches to address evidence-based health disparities and ensure the health of all.
Applicants are encouraged to consult NIMH staff when developing an application.
ICO Scientific Contact:Michael Stirratt, PhD
[email protected]
Mary Acri (Marro), PhD, LCSW
[email protected]
NIMHD is interested in solutions-oriented research to improve adherence and maintenance to health-promoting behavior(s) and reduce health disparities. Adherence-focused projects must include validated behavioral, health, clinical, or biomedical outcomes. NIMHD prioritizes adherence studies that include multidisciplinary research and academic-community partnerships.
Priority areas include:
- Examining multilevel determinants and mechanisms of sustained health behavior change.
- Testing person-centered and adaptive approaches to support and sustain health-promoting behaviors.
- Characterizing the interplay of holistic, behavioral, and psychosocial factors influencing adherence and maintenance.
- Implementing and sustaining adherence and behavior maintenance interventions.
- Behavioral interventions with long-term follow-up to assess adherence and maintenance outcomes.
- Intervention and evaluation studies targeting cognitive barriers to positive habit formation and sustained behavior change.
Nathaniel Stinson, Jr., MD, PhD, MPH
[email protected]
The National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) will support solutions-oriented adherence research which leverages nurse-led interventions, considers the conditions of people's lives, is developed in collaboration with communities, and is conducted by scientists from any discipline. Research priorities include:
- Develop or evaluate interventions that use evidence-based therapeutic collaborations between clinicians and patients to reduce risks and promote long-term adoption and practice of health behaviors.
- Implement rigorous and patient-informed behavioral maintenance approaches across real-world settings where people live, work, receive care, and manage health.
- Explore how nurse-led technological interventions can bridge the transition from hospital to home and support adherence to recommended health behaviors to enhance and sustain behaviors among individuals managing chronic conditions.
Karen Huss, PhD, RN
[email protected]
OAR supports behavioral, social, and implementation research on adherence to, and the long-term maintenance of, effective HIV prevention and treatment strategies. Areas of particular interest include improving uptake, persistence, and sustained engagement across the HIV prevention and care continuum; supporting long-term treatment adherence, sustained viral suppression, retention in care, and healthy aging among people with or affected by HIV; addressing behavioral, social, and structural determinants that affect adherence; identifying population-specific needs and tailoring strategies for populations disproportionately affected by HIV; and identifying scalable, evidence-based implementation approaches that improve health outcomes in real-world settings.
Elizabeth Barr, PhD
[email protected]
ODP is interested in providing co-funding for intervention studies that address adherence to preventive interventions and screening, treatment recommendations, and maintenance of behaviors to improve long-term health outcomes, including multi-level or multi-site clinical trials.
JoyAnn Courtney, PhD
[email protected]
For this topic, THRO supports adherence research that specifically aims to improve American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) health. Projects may focus on any part(s) of the adherence process from initiation through maintenance and any social ecological level(s) of influence from the individual to the community. Studies are encouraged that address AI/AN- and Tribe-specific barriers to adherence and/or tap into existing resources and strengths. Research approaches should be culturally grounded and involve AI/AN communities and practices as much as possible.
Sheila Caldwell, PhD
[email protected]
Christopher Barnhart, PhD
[email protected]
For technical issues E-mail OER Webmaster