Mission & Approach

Meet our Team

Key Collaborators

Consulting

Training Opportunities

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AFFILIATIONS:

MISSION

The overall goal of the Sleep and Health Research Program is to:

• Conduct research studies on the role of sleep in health in the real world, including
  • Clarifying downstream cardiometabolic and neurocognitive effects of habitual sleep duration and
  • Understanding upstream social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of sleep in real world settings;
• Develop and implement successful sleep interventions for improving health;
• Improve the understanding of the role of sleep in health disparities;
• Translate basic sleep science findings into relevant, real-world applications;
• Clarify when sleep is a unique contributor to health versus instances where sleep is simply a marker of another process;
• Educate students, health professionals and the general public on the importance of sleep in the context of health; and
• Empower corporations, athletic teams, and other organizations to develop and deploy system-based approaches for addressing sleep and health needs.

APPROACH

To accomplish these goals, we are engaged in the following:

• Observational research studies to better understand the associations between sleep and health and performance.
• Analyses of surveillance measures to document population-level trends in sleep and relationships to health and performance.
• Experimental protocols to determine optimal intervention strategies.
• Clinical trials to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions.
• Program development and evaluation for organizational initiatives.
• Educational programs aimed at students, professionals, and the public.
• Outreach efforts within the community to promote healthy sleep practices.

METHODS

• Sleep
  • Prospective diaries
  • Wrist actigraphy
  • Polysomnography
• Physical Activity
  • Hip actigraphy
• Diet
  • Standardized 24-h recall
  • Prospective diaries
  • Bionutritional analysis
• Cardiovascular function and risk
  • Ambulatory blood pressure
  • Arterial tonometry
  • Anthropometry
  • Bioassays of inflammation
  • Bioassays of lipid profile
• Metabolism
  • Glucose tolerance tests
  • Bioassays for insulin and glucose
  • Bioassays for metabolic hormones
• Stress
  • Heart rate variability
  • Salivary and plasma cortisol
  • Bioassays of catecholamines
  • Galvanic skin response
• Neurocognitive function
  • Psychomotor vigilance task (PVT-192, Palm, Android, Tablet)
  • Neuropsychological testing (paper/pencil and computer-based)
• Psychiatric symptoms
  • Clinical interviews
  • SCID and MINI assessments
• Environmental measures
  • Spectrophotometry
  • Photometry
  • Sound and noise recordings
  • Temperature/Humidity Logging
  • Pressure Transduction (for assessing sleeping surface)