National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project

CDC Awarded the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (external) a 3-year grant (2021–2024) titled Expanding the National Approach to Chronic Disease Education and Awareness

This project will focus on expanding education and awareness of obstructive sleep apnea. The project will promote awareness to public health professionals through data dissemination activities, to the public through educational activities that include tailoring messaging specifically for designated health disparity populations, and to health care professionals through educational activities that focus on testing procedures, diagnosis, referral options, treatment, and long-term management options.

A key component of this project will be to form a coalition of partners and collaborators that will work together to make a widespread and measurable effect on obstructive sleep apnea public and professional awareness.

CDC awarded the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (external) a 5-year (2013–2018) cooperative agreement to coordinate the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project. The primary purpose of this collaborative program was to:

• Expand sleep health promotion and sleep prevention awareness.
• Develop partnerships and collaborations to improve education and awareness about sleep hygiene.
• Improve provider knowledge and skills about sleep health promotion.
• Recommend a sleep health data collection model.
• Identify and disseminate sleep health-related policies.

The project focused on the following Healthy People 2020 Sleep Health objectives:

• Increase the proportion of persons with symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea who seek medical evaluation.
• Reduce the rate of vehicular crashes per 100 million miles traveled that are due to drowsy driving.
• Increase the proportion of students in grades 9 through 12 who get sufficient sleep.
• Increase the proportion of adults who get sufficient sleep.