Sleep Epidemiology

People often deprioritize sleep to make more time for work or social demands. However, growing evidence demonstrates the central role of sleep in health, affecting everything from cardiometabolic disease and mental health to cancer. In this course we will explore sleep from a population-level health perspective. Starting with a brief overview of the neurobiology of sleep and population-level health concepts, we will then delve into definitions and measurement of sleep health and disorders, the social, environmental, and genetic determinants of sleep, the negative health outcomes associated with suboptimal sleep, and sleep-related public health interventions. The class format will include a combination of lecture and critical discussion of the sleep research literature.



Sarah received her B.A. from Middlebury College and is currently a fifth-year PhD student in cardiovascular and molecular epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation work examines how the relationship between sleep and cardiometabolic disease is mediated by inflammatory pathways.