About Sleep Equity Project
Sleep Equity Project envisions a world where all people regardless of gender identity, race, socioeconomic status, and neighborhood enjoy the restorative benefit of healthy sleep.
Our mission to make the health benefit of high quality sleep equally accessible to all individuals, families, communities regardless of socioeconomic status and gender. Our goal is to develop and implement programming in the community to address insufficient sleep as a contributing factor to the development of disease morbidity and early mortality in health disparity populations.
Sleep Equity Project was formed in November 2022 to fill the gap in advocacy, direct work on community interventions, and supporting translational research which implements interventions in the community for those who are underserved (gender, racial and socioeconomic, geographical) . Despite a robust and wonderful patient advocacy landscape which serves many specific sleep disorders, there is no one organization that is solely focused on serving those who are underserved at a policy, advocacy, and resource level. There are many wonderful health equity organizations working hard on the various components which comprise inequitable outcomes for underserved people. Sleep Equity Project is an effort to be part of those important conversations among practitioners, fellow patients, caregivers, legislators, federal agencies, insurance companies, and corporations involved in the world of an underserved sleep patient.
“Notably, insufficient sleep has been linked to the development and management of a number of chronic diseases and conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression.." (9)
Centers for Disease Control
"Infection-fighting antibodies and cells are reduced during periods when you don't get enough sleep. So, your body needs sleep to fight infectious diseases. Long-term lack of sleep also increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart and blood vessel (cardiovascular) disease." (10)
Sleep and Disease
Central Concepts Which Impact Sleep Equity
There are three key aspects which contribute to sleep inequities:
Social Determinants of Health Intersectionality Identified Health Disparity Population
Social Determinants of Health
Quality of Sleep and Social Determinants of Health
There are various aspects of life which have an impact on health outcomes for individuals and groups of people. The concept of Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) according to the World Health Organization are “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age” and “the fundamental drivers of these conditions.”
"Insufficient sleep was associated with being female, White or Black/African-American, unemployed, without health insurance, and not married; decreased age, income, education, physical activity; worse diet and overall health; and increased household size, alcohol, and smoking."
Grandner, Jackson, Bilggy, Gallagher, Murry-Bachmann, Williams, Patel, Jean-Louis 2015 Frontiers in Neurology (12)
Image Credit reference citation (13)
Intersectionality and How It Relates to Sleep
Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege.
This framework helps provide the basis for the numerous contributing factors which drive sleep disparities and impact the Social Determinants of Health.
The socioeconomic status, the stress of racism, acculturation (a new language or culture) are factors which research has demonstrated has an impact on the quality and quality of a persons sleep.
Populations With Health Disparities
The National Institute of Minority Health Issues and Health Disparities defined specific populations who are at risk based on the available data and research of existing outcomes.
Those populations are:
Racial and ethnic minority groups
People with lower socioeconomic status (SES).
Underserved rural communities.
Sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups.
Racial minorities and those with lower socioeconomic status have shown significant differences in the prevalence of sleep related problems at baseline in the incidence of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. (14)