Announcements: National Sleep Awareness Week — March 3–10, 2013

	MMWR Weekly Volume 62, No. 8 March 1, 2013

Announcements: National Sleep Awareness Week — March 3–10, 2013

Weekly

March 1, 2013 / 62(08);152

During March 3–10, 2013, National Sleep Awareness Week will be observed in the United States. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults get 7–9 hours of sleep per night (1). Receiving less sleep can pose serious consequences to health and safety. In a population-based community study, those who reported an average sleep duration of ≤6 hours (6.7%) were significantly more likely to also report that they had fallen asleep while driving than were those who reported average sleep duration of 7–9 hours (2.6%) (2).
In addition to creating a risk to public safety, self-reported insufficient sleep has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity (3). The origins of insufficient sleep can, in certain cases, begin early in life and pose lasting consequences. A retrospective cohort study found that self-reported instances of neglect or abuse during childhood (i.e., adverse childhood experiences [ACEs]) were associated with frequent insufficient sleep decades after their occurrence. Specifically, the odds of frequent insufficient sleep were 2.5 times (95% confidence interval = 2.1–3.1) greater among respondents reporting five or more ACEs than among those reporting no ACEs (4). Such findings suggest the importance of sleep as a measure of both public health and safety, as well as a marker of potential household dysfunction. Additional information regarding sleep is available at http://www.cdc.gov/sleep.

References

1. National Sleep Foundation. How much sleep do we really need? Arlington, VA: National Sleep Foundation; 2011. Available at http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need.
2. CDC. Drowsy driving–19 states and the District of Columbia, 2009–2010. MMWR 2013;61:1033–7.
3. Strine TW, Chapman DP. Associations of frequent sleep insufficiency with health-related quality of life and health behaviors. Sleep Med 2005;6:23–7.
4. Chapman DP, Liu Y, Presley-Cantrell LR, et al. Adverse childhood experiences and frequent insufficient sleep in 5 US states, 2009: a retrospective cohort study. BMC Public Health 2013;13(3).