Digital Sleep Intervention for Families of Young Children - PROJECT SUMMARY My long-term career goal is to become an independent scientist with expertise in developing, testing, implementing and scaling accessible, engaging, family-centered preventive interventions. Specifically, I plan to focus on digitally enabled interventions tailored for Black families of young children with sleep problems as a promising strategy to promote sleep health at the population level. My prior training, professional and research experiences to date, provide key foundational elements for reaching this goal. I recently completed a mixed methods study using human-centered design principles with 30 Black families of preschoolers with sleep problems to inform the development of a digitally enabled intervention. The user centered intervention experience takes parents on a “journey” intended to increase motivation for behavior change and build capacity to apply evidence-based behavioral strategies tailored to their unique situation, context and values. Parents are presented with interactive and engaging information about sleep health (e.g., recommended hours of sleep and limited screen time for 3- to 5-year-olds) and what role parents can play in promoting healthy sleep in early childhood (e.g., establishing bedtime routines and setting consistent bedtimes). Then, parents are asked to reflect on their typical interactions around bedtime (e.g., bedtime routines, bedtime resistance), motivation for behavior change (e.g., importance of getting child to sleep through the night), home context (e.g., sleeping arrangements), level of parent stress and child anxiety about sleep. Next, parents are presented with a range of evidence-based strategies to choose from, including establishing bedtime routines, managing bedtime resistance, reducing their own stress, and reducing child anxiety about sleep. Parents will have access to all the evidence-based strategies, with multiple options to choose from in some areas, and with suggestions about what to start with based on reflections. Importantly, parents are encouraged to choose from among the strategies that align with their values, priorities and comfort. Guided by the socio-ecological model for child sleep health, and prevention science and implementation science frameworks, I will carry out user testing of the brief digitally enabled intervention for Black families of 3- to 5-year-olds with mild sleep problems (bedtime resistance or inadequate sleep duration) to evaluate usability, functionality and overall user experience. I will then evaluate feasibility, acceptability and estimate the effects of the optimized intervention on parenting practices and child sleep problems through a two-arm wait list control pilot study with 40 Black families of preschoolers with mild sleep problems. The results of the pilot study will inform a randomized controlled trial to evaluate implementation and effectiveness outcomes of the optimized intervention.
