Addressing Health Disparities in African Americans - Exploring Sleep and Developing Interventions

The purpose of the HD-SLEEP1 study is to help researchers understand what African Americans know and think about sleep. The investigators also want to know how to encourage people to participate in research studies designed to improve sleep.

African Americans (AAs) sleep worse than whites on average, thus contributing to race disparities in major health outcomes. However, contributors to poorer sleep and effective interventions to improve sleep among AAs is lacking due to under-representation of AAs in sleep research. The investigators propose to address this knowledge gap through engagement with the Baton Rouge African American community. The investigators will use focus groups to determine sleep-related perceptions as well as barriers to sleep research recruitment and retention. In this study, up to 60 African Americans who self-report poor sleep will be invited to participate in focus group discussions to understand 1) sleep related perceptions; 2) factors influencing participation; and 3) willingness to undertake study procedures typical of sleep research studies such as increasing sleep duration, diagnosing and treating OSA; along with other routine research procedures including blood draws, caloric restriction, and body composition exams.