Maintenance of long-term behavior change.

Objectives: To describe the formation and work of the Health Maintenance Consortium (HMC), a collaborative of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health to study long-term behavior change across a variety of diseases and conditions.
Methods: The historical development of the program, especially the focus on behavior change maintenance, is briefly described. Previous work on behavior change that paved the way for the HMC is also discussed.
Results: Aiming to accelerate the pace of discovery and application, NIH funding to create the HMC has created a strong research base for making progress toward filling key knowledge and intervention gaps in long-term behavior change.
Conclusions: Investments in behavior change and maintenance have yielded important information that can be used to guide the development of future programs to improve health.