Improving Diet and Physical Activity Assessment (R01)

-Purpose. Diet and physical activity are lifestyle and behavioral factors that play a role in the etiology and prevention of many chronic diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. Both also play roles in preventing overweight/obesity and in maintaining weight loss. Therefore, diet and physical activity are assessed for both surveillance and epidemiologic/clinical research purposes. The measurement of usual dietary intake or physical activity over varying time periods or in the past, by necessity, has relied on self-report instruments. Such subjective reporting instruments are cognitively difficult for respondents, and are prone to considerable measurement errors that may vary among population subgroups and depend on the time frame considered and the characteristics of the respondents. -The National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of the Director (OD) Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), are interested in promoting innovative research to enhance the quality of measurements of dietary intake and physical activity. Applications submitted under this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) may include development of: novel assessment approaches and/or better methods to evaluate instruments assessment tools for culturally diverse populations across various age groups including older adults; improved technologies and/or applications of existing technologies; and/or statistical methods to assess or correct for measurement errors or biases. -Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) award mechanism and runs in parallel with an FOA of identical scientific scope, PAR-06-103, that solicits applications under the Exploratory/Developmental Grant (R21) award mechanism.