A Need for Public and Professional Awareness and Education

Sleep problems play a significant role in numerous medical disorders and relate to almost every field of medicine.  Despite the high prevalence of sleep disorders, the overwhelming majority of sufferers remain undiagnosed and untreated, creating unwarranted public health and safety problems, as well as increased health care utilization.

Additionally, Americans are chronically sleep deprived as a result of demanding lifestyles and a lack of education about the impact of sleep loss.  Sleepiness affects vigilance, reaction times, learning abilities, alertness, mood, hand-eye coordination, and the accuracy of short-term memory.  Sleepiness, as a result of untreated disorders or sleep deprivation, has been identified as the cause of a growing number of on-the-job accidents and automobile crashes. 

At this time, there are virtually no on-going national educational programs regarding sleep and fatigue issues aimed at the general public, underserved communities or at-risk groups. 

The Roundtable will undertake strategies that help ensure that the general public and health care professionals recognize the signs and symptoms of sleep disorders in order to facilitate proper diagnosis and treatment. NSART will also seek innovative ways to introduce sleep information into high school and college curricula.

A Need for Data Collection and Public Health Surveillance

Effective education requires not only informing the public and health care practitioners about the importance of sleep, but also tracking sleep habits and behaviors over a period of time.  The development of sensitive surveillance and monitoring systems at the national, state and local level is important for informing heath care providers, researchers, and policy makers about the impact of insufficient or disordered sleep on health and safety.  At this time, sleep is essentially absent from federally-supported surveillance systems, thereby limiting the inclusion of sleep-related factors in documents such as the Department of Health and Human Service’s Healthy People 2010 and Steps to a HealthierUS, as well as coverage by managed care systems.

Better data and surveillance systems are needed to fully assess how sleep deprivation and disordered sleep are linked to morbidity and mortality and other public health concerns.  Baseline data and tracking measures are needed to identify clear goals and metrics for subsequent educational programs and intervention models related to promulgating good sleep habits, the treatment of sleep disorders, and combating the consequences of sleep deprivation. 

NSART will work to incorporate sleep-related questions and components into ongoing surveillance systems and longitudinal research studies.  The Roundtable will seek innovative ways to encourage those in the field to analyze and publish research based on any existing data sets.  NSART will also seek to identify new developmental objectives and supporting data sets in preparation for deliberations around Healthy People 2020 in spring 2007.