Nancy S. Redeker, Yale School of Nursing Beatrice Renfield Term Professor of Nursing, and Professor Lois S. Sadler of YSN and the Yale Child Study Center, have received a two-year $474,754 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their study, “Community Partnership for Healthy Sleep.” The study is jointly funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research.
Young children from socially and economically stressed urban environments are at a high risk of developing unhealthy sleep habits and their corresponding negative consequences. Sleep difficulty can lead to behavior and mental health issues, problems in school performance, injury, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, among others.
The purpose of the study is to develop a culturally relevant, feasible, and effective intervention to improve sleep in children between 6 and 36 months of age with the engagement of the community of families and pediatric health care providers in the New Haven area.
“By working closely with the community we hope to assure that the resulting program addresses their specific needs,” explained Dr. Redeker. “We expect to use the information from this project to develop a community engaged clinical trial to fully test the effects of the intervention and ultimately improve sleep and the many possible outcomes associated with poor sleep.”
From this study, Dr.’s Redeker and Sadler will obtain preliminary information in support of a community-engaged sleep promotion program for children. Specifically, the study will address three primary goals: (1) examine parents’ knowledge and perceptions about their child’s sleep and objective characteristics of sleep; (2) examine pediatric primary care providers’ perceptions about the importance of healthy sleep habits in children; (3) collaborate with families and providers to use the information obtained from the study to develop an achievable sleep promotion program. Their long term goal is to disseminate and translate an effective sleep promotion intervention into community settings.
Both Dr. Redeker and Dr. Sadler collaborate with colleagues across Yale University on several projects. Dr. Redeker is Principal Investigator of the Yale Center for Sleep Disturbance in Acute and Chronic Conditions, an exploratory center funded by the NINR in 2012 and Director of the YSN Biobehavioral Laboratory and has an appointment at the Yale School of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine. Dr. Sadler is Principal Investigator/Co-Director of Minding the Baby®, a community-based home visiting intervention for first-time young families, founded by faculty members at YSN and the Yale Child Study Center in collaboration with colleagues from the Fair Haven Community Health Center, and Research Lead at YSN.
Dr. Redeker’s research focuses on sleep disorders and their consequences and the development of self-management interventions to promote sleep in a variety of populations. Her program of research has included studies of sleep among patients who have cardiovascular disorders, and investigations of sleep in adult acute and critical care settings, as well as studies of sleep in families living with economic adversity.
Dr. Sadler’s research focuses on the transition to parenthood among urban adolescent mothers and their families, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and evaluation of specialized support programs for at-risk young parents and their children. She teaches master’s and doctoral students at YSN in the areas of family studies, child development, research, and research ethics.