The Social Epidemiology of Sleep

AN ESSENTIAL NEW RESOURCE ON A FUNDAMENTAL DETERMINANT OF HEALTH Sleep, along with the sleep-related behaviors that impact sleep quality, have emerged as significant determinants of health and well-being across populations. An emerging body of research has confirmed that sleep is strongly socially patterned, following trends along lines of socioeconomic status, race, immigration status, age, work, and geography. The Social Epidemiology of Sleep serves as both an introduction to sleep epidemiology and a synthesis of the most important and exciting research to date, including: · An introduction to sleep epidemiology, including methods of assessment and their validity, the descriptive epidemiology of sleep patterns and disorders, associations with health, and basic biology · What we know about the variation of sleep patterns and disorders across populations, including consideration of sleep across the lifespan and within special populations · Major social determinants of sleep (including socioeconomic status, immigration status, neighborhood contexts, and others) based on the accumulated research With editors from both population science and medicine, combined with contributions from psychology, sociology, demography, geography, social epidemiology, and medicine, this text codifies a new field at the intersection of how we sleep and the social and behavioral factors that influence it.

About the Author

DUSTIN T. DUNCAN , ScD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at the New York University School of Medicine, where he directs the Spatial Epidemiology Lab. Duncan is a social and spatial epidemiologist, studying how social factors, including neighborhood characteristics, influence sexual health, sleep health, and minority health. He completed his doctorate and the Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship, both in social epidemiology, at Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health. ICHIRO KAWACHI , MBChB, PhD, is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1992. He is coeditor of several books, including Neighborhoods and Health , Behavioral Economics and Public Health , Social Epidemiology , and the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice , all published by Oxford University Press. SUSAN REDLINE , MD, MPH, is the Peter C. Farrell Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Senior Physician in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her research is focused on epidemiological studies to elucidate the etiologies of sleep disorders, including the role of genetic and early life developmental factors, and epidemiological and clinical trials aimed at understanding the health outcomes of sleep disorders and the role of sleep interventions in improving health.