The Influence of Religiosity and Spirituality on Health Risk Behaviors in Children and Adolescents (R01) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH funding opportunity titled "The Influence of Religiosity and Spirituality on Health Risk Behaviors in Children and Adolescents (R01)" (Funding Opportunity Number PA-07-181) supports research that looks closely at how religiosity develops in young people, how it is passed along within families and communities, and how it can shape behaviors linked to HIV risk during childhood and adolescence. The central goal is to understand the pathways through which religious and spiritual beliefs, practices, and environments affect early sexual behavior and the use of alcohol or other drugs, especially when those behaviors increase the likelihood of HIV transmission. A key feature of the announcement is that it treats religiosity as potentially protective in some settings and potentially harmful in others, encouraging applicants to examine both positive and negative effects rather than assuming religiosity is automatically beneficial or automatically risky.

The science focus is on mechanisms, mediators, and moderators. In practical terms, this means the NIH is looking for studies that do more than show a simple correlation between religiosity and behavior. Proposed projects are expected to investigate how religiosity exerts influence (mechanisms), what factors explain the relationship (mediators, such as peer norms, parental monitoring, moral beliefs, stigma, social support, or mental health), and under what conditions the relationship changes (moderators, such as age, gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family structure, denomination or tradition, level of community religious involvement, or local cultural context). The announcement highlights intergenerational transmission, so strong applications would typically consider how beliefs and practices are communicated from parents or caregivers to children, how youth interpret and adopt those messages, and how family and community religious life intersects with development during adolescence.

The FOA also stresses the importance of considering the increasingly pluralistic religious landscape in the United States. Rather than focusing narrowly on a single tradition, it invites research that is attentive to the diversity of religions and belief systems present in the U.S., and by extension the different norms, teachings, and community practices that may influence adolescent decision-making. This emphasis implies interest in culturally grounded and context-sensitive research designs, including studies that can distinguish between different dimensions of religiosity (for example, affiliation, attendance, private practices, personal salience, spirituality, doctrinal beliefs, and participation in youth programs) and how those dimensions might relate differently to sexual initiation, condom use, number of partners, substance use, co-occurring risk behaviors, and other HIV-related outcomes.

In terms of funding structure, this opportunity uses the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) mechanism, which is intended for full-scale, hypothesis-driven research projects that can support substantial, multi-year work. The announcement notes it runs in parallel with companion FOAs of identical scientific scope that use other mechanisms: an R03 small research grant and an R21 exploratory/developmental grant. Budgets and project periods are not set to a single fixed amount because NIH expects proposals to vary in size and complexity; the number of awards and total dollars ultimately depend on the number of applications received, their scientific merit, and requested costs and duration.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of institutions and organizations. Eligible applicants include public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status, small businesses and other for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), state governments, U.S. territories or possessions, and a range of tribal entities (federally recognized tribes, other tribal governments, and tribally designated organizations). The FOA also explicitly lists and welcomes participation from organizations such as Hispanic-serving institutions, HBCUs, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, regional organizations, and eligible federal agencies. Importantly, faith-based and community-based organizations may apply, and foreign (non-U.S.) entities are also eligible, which signals openness to international perspectives or comparative work, so long as the research fits the FOA focus.

Administrative details in the source listing show the opportunity is a discretionary grant under NIH, with activity areas spanning education, health, income security, and social services, and it is associated with CFDA program numbers that include alcohol research, nursing research, and child health and human development extramural research (93.273, 93.361, 93.865). The FOA does not require cost sharing or matching. The opportunity was posted December 15, 2006, and used multiple receipt dates rather than a single deadline; it was later archived August 5, 2009. For full details, NIH directed applicants to the complete announcement page (grants.nih.gov) and provided an NIH Office of Extramural Research webmaster contact for access or linking issues.

Overall, this grant announcement is aimed at building a clearer, evidence-based understanding of when and how religiosity shapes adolescent health risk behaviors connected to HIV transmission, with special attention to the complex social and developmental processes that link family, belief, identity, and behavior. It encourages rigorous research designs that can unpack causal pathways and contextual differences, rather than treating religiosity as a single uniform factor.

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