Although there has been recent attention to the correlates, mediators and outcomes of relapse prevention/management, this field of research is still in its infancy. The goal of the Maintenance and Sustainability Resource Center (MSRC) is to provide direction to the behavioral health field by bringing together disparate theories of processes of change, relapse prevention, and ecological/multi-level contextual approaches to further understand the long-term maintenance of behavioral change and effective sustainable strategies for achieving health promotion and disease prevention goals. Working collaboratively with NIH program administrators and investigators funded under the Maintenance of Long Term Behavior Change (MLTBC) RFA, the MSRC is designed to facilitate success of individual grantees and to push the boundaries of current research on behavioral processes and change research. The centralization and coordination of functions offers an economy of scale, and foci for building research and practice capacity. The MSRC team has substantial technical knowledge of health behavior and behavior change processes as well as previous experience in health behavior intervention research. The MSRC has identified four interrelated aims to advance behavioral change research beyond the individual funded studies. Utilizing both internal and external advisors, the MSRC will create a scientific and administrative infrastructure to: 1) Foster ongoing cross-site communications among projects funded under the MLTBC RFA; 2) Provide technical assistance to identify common questions, methods, and measures related to maintenance and sustainability and to address cross-cutting issues that add synergy to individual MLTBC projects; 3) Establish a central clearinghouse for behavioral change concepts, assessment instruments, intervention protocols, methods and data emanating from these projects that can be beneficial for other researchers and practitioners; and 4) Disseminate research findings and tools on-line and through listservs, workshops, and symposia to increase their availability to both researchers and practitioners. While individual studies can add to this new science, a collection of coordinated studies around this common theme of maintenance of long-term behavior has the potential for making a significant impact on the nation's health and well being.
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